Did the "Manhattan Project" succeed thanks to Nazi enriched uranium
A fascinating possibility and an even more fascinating quid pro quo if true...

The following is extracted from Farrell's online book "Reich of the Black Sun"

Chapter 3: U-234, U235, AND THE STRANGE CASE OF THE MISSING URANIUM 53

"The traditional history denies, however, that the uranium on board U-234 was enriched and therefore easily usable in an atomic bomb. The accepted theory asserts there is no evidence that the uranium stocks of U-234 were transferred into the Manhattan Project... And the traditional history asserts that the bomb components on board (the) U-234 arrived too late to be included in the atomic bombs that were dropped on Jepan.

"The documentation indicates quite differently on all accounts. "

Carter P. Hydrick, Critical Mass: The Real Story of the Atomic Bomb and the Birth of the Nuclear Age.'

In December of 1944, an unhappy report is made to some unhappy people: "A study of the shipment of (bomb grade uranium) for the past three months shows the following....: At present rate we will have 10 kilos about February 7 and 15 kilos about May 1."2 This was bad news indeed, for a uranium based atom bomb required between 10-100 kilograms by the earliest estimates (ca. 1942), and, by the time this memo was written, about 50 kilos, the more accurate calculation of critical mass needed to make an atom bomb from uranium.

One may imagine the consternation this memo must have caused at headquarters. The was, perhaps, a considerable degree of yelling and screaming and finger pointing and other histrionics, interlarded with desperate orders to re-double efforts amid the fire- tinged skies of the war's Wagnerian Gotterdammerung.

The problem, however, is that the memo is not German at all. It originates within the Manhattan Project on December 28, 1944, from Eric Jette, the chief metallurgist at Los Alamos. One may imagine the desperation it must have triggered, however, since the Manhattan Project had consumed two billion dollars all in the pursuit of plutonium and uranium atom bombs. By this time it was of course apparent that there were significant and seemingly insurmountable problems in designing a plutonium bomb, for the fuses available to the Allies were simply far too slow to achieve the uniform compression of a plutonium core within the very short span of time needed to initiate uncontrolled nuclear fission.

That left the uranium bomb as the more immediately feasible alternative - as the Germans had discovered years earlier - to the acquisition of a functioning weapon within the projected span of the war. Yet, after a veritable hemorrhage of dollars in pursuit of the latter objective, the Manhattan Project was far short of the necessary critical mass for a uranium bomb. And with the inevitability of an invasion of Japan looming, the pressure on General Leslie Groves to produce results was immense.

The lack of a sufficient stockpile, after years of concerntrated all-out effort, was in part explainable, for two years earlier Fermi had been successful in construction of the first functioning atomic reactor. That success had spurred the American project to commit more seriously to the pursuit of a plutonium bomb. Accordingly, some of the precious and scarce refined and enriched uranium 235 coming out of Oak Ridge and Lawrence's beta calutrons was being siphoned off as feedstock for enrichment and transmutation into plutonium in the breeder reactors constructed at Handford, Washington for the purpose. Thus, some of the fissionable uranium stockpile had been deliberately diverted for plutonium production.3 The decision was a logical one and the Manhattan Project decision- makers cannot be faulted to taking it. The reason is simple. Pound for weapons grade pound, a pound of plutonium will produce more bombs than a pound of uranium. It thus made economic sense to convert enriched uranium to plutonium, for more bombs would be possible with the same amount of material.

3 Hydrick, op. cit, p. 12.

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But in December of 1944, having pursued both options, General Leslie Groves now stood on the verge of losing both gambles. And let us not forget what had just happened in I urope to sour the mood of "those in the know" in the United States even further. There, six months after the Allied landings in Normandy and the headlong dash across France, Allied armies had stalled on the borders of the Reich. Allied intelligence analysts confidently reassured the generals that no further significant German military offensive was possible, and their optimism was reflected in the general mood of the citizenry in France, Britain, and the United States. The mood was brutally shattered when, on December 16, 1944, the German Army and Luftwaffe mounted one last, desperate offensive with secretly husbanded reserves in the Ardennes forest, scene of their 1940 triumph against France. Within a matter of hours, the offensive had broken through American lines, surrounded, captured, or otherwise decimated the entire 116th American infantry division, and days later, surrounded the 101st Airborne division at Bastogne, and appeared well on the way to crossing the Meuse River at Namur. On December 28, 1944, when the memo was written, the German offensive had been stalled, but not stopped.

For the Allied officers privy to intelligence reports and "in the loop" on the Manhattan Project, the offensive was possibly seen as confirmation of their worst fears: the Germans were close to a bomb, and were trying to buy time. The horrible thought in the back of every Allied scientist's and engineer's head must have been that after all the Allied military successes of the previous years, the race for the bomb could still be won by the Germans. And if they were able to produce enough of them to put unbearable pressure on any one of the Western Allies, the outcome of the war itself was still in doubt. If, for example, the Germans had a-bombed British and French cities, it is unlikely that a continuance of the would have been politically feasible for Churchill's wartime coalition government. In all likelihood it would have collapsed. A similar result would have likely occurred in France. And without British and French bases available for supply and forward deployment, the

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American military situation on the continent would have become untenable, if not disastrous.

In any case, word of the Manhattan Project's difficulties apparently leaked in the Washington DC political community, for United States Senator James F. Byrnes got in on the act, writing a memorandum to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and confirming that the Manhattan Project was perceived - at least by some in the know - as being in danger of failure:

SECRET March 3, 1945

MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT

FROM: JAMES F. BYRNES

I understand that the expenditures for the Manhattan project are

approaching 2 billion dollars with no definite assurance yet of

production.

We have succeeded to date in obtaining the cooperation of

Congressional Committees in secret meetings. Perhaps we can

continue to do so while the war lasts.

However, if the project proves a failure, it will be subjected to

relentless criticism.4

Senator Brynes' memorandum highlights the real problem in the Manhattan Project, and the real, though certainly not publicly known, military situation of the Allies ca. late 1944 and early 1945: that in spite of tremendous conventional military success against the Third Reich, the Western Allies and Soviet Russia could conceivably still be forced to a "draw" if Germany deployed and used atom bombs in sufficient numbers to affect the political situation of the Western Allies. With its stockpile of enriched uranium already depleted by the decision to develop more plutonium for a bomb (which as it turned out was undetonatable 4

with existing British and American fuse technology anyway) and far below that needed for a uranium-based atom bomb, "the entire enterprise

Senator Byrnes' March 1945 Memorandum to President Roosevelt

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appeared destined for defeat."5 Not only defeat, but for "those in the know" in late 1944 and early 1945, the possibility was one of ignominious defeat and horrible carnage.

If the stocks of weapons grade uranium ca. late 1944 - early 1945 were about half of what they needed to be after two years of research and production, and if this in turn was the cause of Senator Byrnes' concern, how then did the Manhattan Project acquire the large remaining amount or uranium 235 needed in the few months from March to the dropping of the Little Boy bomb on Hiroshima in August, only five months away? How did it accomplish this feat, if in feet after some three years of production it had only produced less than half of the needed supply of critical mass weapons grade uranium? Where did its missing uranium 235 come from? And how did it solve the pressing problem of the fuses for a plutonium bomb?

Of course the answer if that if the Manhattan Project was incapable of producing enough enriched uranium in that short amount of time - months rather than years - then its stocks had to have been supplemented from external sources, and there is only one viable place with the necessary technology to enrich uranium on that scale, as seen in the previous chapter. That source was Nazi Germany. But the Manhattan Project is not the only atom bomb project with some missing uranium.

Germany too appears to have suffered the "missing uranium syndrome" in the final days prior to and immediately after the end of the war. But the problem in Germany's case is that the missing uranium it not a few tens of kilos, but several hundred tons. At this juncture, it is worth citing Carter Hydrick's excellent research at length, in order to exhibit the full ramifications of this problem:

From June of 1940 to the end of the war, Germany seized 3,500 tons of uranium compounds from Belgium - almost three times the amount Groves had purchased.... and stored it in salt mines in Strassfurt, Germany. Groves brags that on 17 April, 1945, as the war was winding down, Alsos recovered some 1,100 tons of uranium ore from Strassfurt and an additional 31 tons in Toulouse, France ..... And he claims that the amount recovered was all that Germany had ever held, asserting, therefore, that Germany had never had enough raw material

5 Hydrick, op. cit, p. 13.

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to process the uranium either for a plutonium reactor pile or through magnetic separation techniques.

Obviously, if Strassfurt once held 3,500 tons and only 1,130 were recovered, some 2,370 tons of uranium ore was unaccounted for - still twice the amount the Manhattan Project possessed and is assumed to have used throughout its entire wartime effort.... The material has not been accounted for to this day....

As early as the summer of 1941, according to historian Margaret Gowing, Germany had already refined 600 tons of uranium to its oxide form, the form required for ionizing the material into a gas, in which form the uranium isotopes could then be magnetically or thermally separated or the oxide could be reduced to a metal for a reactor pile. In fact, Professor Dr. Riehl, who was responsible for all uranium throughout Germany during the course of the war, says the figure was actually much higher....

To create either a uranium or plutonium bomb, at some point uranium must be reduced to metal. In the case of plutonium, U238is metalicized; for a uranium bomb, U235 is metalicized. Because of uranium's difficult characteristics, however, this metallurgical process is a tricky one. The United States struggled with the problem early and still was not successful reducing uranium to its metallic form in large production wuantities until late in 1942. The German technicians, however,... by the end of 1940, had already processed 280.6 kilograms into metal, over a quarter of a ton.6

These observations require some additional commentary.

First, it is to be noted that Nazi Germany, by the best available evidence, was missing approximately two thousand tons of unrefined uranium ore by the war's end. Where did this ore go?

Second, it is clear that Nazi Germany was enriching uranium on a massive scale, having refined 600 tons to oxide form for potential metalicization as early as 1940. This would require a large and dedicated effort, with thousands of technicians, and a commensurately large facility or facilties to accomplish the enrichment. The figures, in other words, tend to corroborate the hypothesis outlined in the previous chapter that the I.G. Farben "Buna" factory at Auschwitz was not a Buna factory at all, but a huge uranium enrichment facility. However, the date would imply

6 Hydrick, op. cit., p. 23, emphasis added.

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another such facility, located elsewhere, since the Auschwitz facility did not really begin production until sometime in 1942.

Finally, it also seems clear that the Germans possessed an enormous stock of metallic uranium. But what was the isotope? Was it U238 for further enrichment and separation into U235, was it intended perhaps as feedstock for a reactor to be transmuted into plutonium, or was it already U235, the necessary material for a uranium atom bomb? Given the statements of the Japanese military attache in Stockholm cited at the end of the previous chapter - that the Germans may have used an atomic or some other weapon of mass destruction on the Eastern Front ca. 1942-43, and given Zinsser's affidavit cited in the first chapter of an atom bomb test in October of 1944, it cannot be conclusively denied that some of this enormous stockpile may also have been U235, the essential component for a bomb.

In any case, these figures strongly suggest that the Germans, ca. 1940-1942 were significantly ahead of the Allies in one very important aspect of atom bomb production: the enrichment of uranium, and therefore, this suggests also that they were demonstrably ahead in the race for an actual functioning atom bomb during this period. But the figures also raise another disturbing question: where did this uranium go?

One answer lies in the mysterious case of a U-boat, the U-234, captured by the Americans in 1945.

***

The case of the U-234 is well-known in literature about the Nazi atom bomb, and of course the Allied Legend is that none of the material on board the U-boat found its way into the American atom bomb project.

None of this could be further from the truth.

The U-234 was a very large mine-laying U-boat that had been adapted as an undersea freighter to carry large cargoes. Consider then the following "cargo manifest" of the U-234's very odd cargo:

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(1)

Two Japanese officers;7

(2)

80 gold-lined cylinders containing 560 kilograms of uranium
oxide;8

(3)

Several wooden cases or barrels full of "water";

( 4 ) I nfrared proximity fuses;

(5) Dr. Heinz Schlicke, inventor of the fuses.

When the U-234 was being loaded with its cargo in Germany for the outward voyage, its radio operator, Wolfgang Hirschfeld, observed the two Japanese officers writing "U235" on the paper wrapping of the cylinders prior to their being loaded into the submarine.9 Needless to say, this observation has called forth the full range of debunking techniques normally applied by skeptics to UFO sightings: low sun angles, poor lighting, distance was to great to see clearly, etc. etc. This is no surprise, for if Hirschfeld saw what he saw, then the enormous implications were obvious.

The use of gold lined cylinders is explainable by the fact that uranium, a highly corrosive metal, is easily contaminated if it comes into contact with other unstable elements. Gold, whose radioactive shielding properties are as great as lead, is also, unlike lead, a highly pure and stable element, and is therefore the element of choicewhen storing or shipping highly enriched and pure uranium for long periods of time, such as a voyage.10 Thus, the uranium oxide on board the U-234 was highly enriched uranium, and most likely, highly enriched U235, the last stage, perhaps, before being reduced to weapons grade or to metalicization for a bomb (if it was already in weapons grade purity). Indeed, if the Japanese officers' labels on 7

The two officers were Air Force Colonel Genzo Shosi, an engineer, and Navy Captain Hideo Tomonaga. When the captain of the U-234 made known his intentions to surrender the submarine, which was then en route to Japan after the German surrender, the two Japanese officers committed hari-kiri, and were buried at sea with full military honors by the Germans.

8 Hydrick's comment on the U-234's cargo manifest explains why the U- 234 was off limits to the American press following its surrender: "Whoever first read the entry and understood the frightening capabilities and potential purpose of uranium must have been stunned by the entry." (op. cit, p. 7)

9 Hydrick, op. cit., p. 5.

10 Ibid., p. 8.

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the cylinders were accurate, it is likely that it was at the final stage of purity before metallicization.

The cargo of the U-234 was so sensitive, in fact, that when the U.S. Navy prepared its own cargo manifest for the German submarine on June 16, 1945, the uranium oxide had entirely disappeared from the list.11 Significantly, within a week of the appearance of the U.S. Navy's version of the U-234's cargo manifest, Oak Ridge's output of enriched uranium very nearly doubled.12 This in itself is highly suspect, since as late as March of 1945, as we have already seen, a U.S. Senator is worried about the failure of the Manhattan Project, so much so that he writes President Roosevelt a memorandum on the subject, and of course, we have also already seen that the chief metallurgist of Los Alamos laboratory indicates the stock of fissile U235 is far short of the needed critical mass, and would remain so for several months.

The conclusion is therefore simple, but frightening: the missing uranium used in the Manhattan Project was German, and that means that Nazi Germany's atom bomb project was much further along that the post-war Allied Legen would have us believe.

But what of the other two items in the U-234's strange cargo manifest, the fuses and their inventor, Dr. Heinz Schilcke? We have already noted that by late 1944 and early 1945, the American plutonium bomb project had run afoul of some nasty mathematics: the critical mass of a plutonium bomb, "imploded" or compressed by surrounding conventional explosives, would have to be assembled within 1/3000th of a second, otherwise the bomb would fail, and only produce a kind of "atomic fizzling firecracker", a "radiological" bomb producing very little explosion but a great deal of deadly radiation. This was a speed far in excess of the capabilities of conventional wire cabling and the ordinary fuses available to the Allied engineers.

It is known that late in the timetable of events leading to the Trinity test of the plutonium bomb in New Mexico that a design modification was introduced to the implosion device that incorporated "radiation venting channels", allowing radiation from

11 Hydride, op. cit., p. 9.
12 Ibid., p. 11

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the plutonium core to escape and reflect off the surrounding reflectors as the detonator was fired, within billionths of a second after the beginning of compression. There is no possible way to

explain this modification other than by the incorporation of Dr. Schlicke's infrared proximity fuses into the final design of the American bomb, since they enabled the fuses to react and fire are the speed of light.13

In support of this historical reconstruction, there is a communication from May 25, 1945 from the chief of Naval Operations, to Portsmouth where the U-234 was brought after its surrender, indicating that Dr. Schlicke, now a prisoner of war, would be accompanied by three naval officers, to secure the fuses and bring them to Washington.14 There Dr. Schlicke was apparently to give a lecture on the fuses under the auspices of a "Mr. Alvarez,"15 who would appear to be none other than well- known Manhattan Project scientist Dr. Luis Alvarez, the very manwho, according to the Allied Legend, "solved" the fusing problemfor the plutonium bomb!16So it would appear that the surrender of the U-234 to the Americans in 1945 solved the Manhattan Project's two biggest outstanding problems: lack of sufficient supplies of weapons grade uranium, and lack of adequate fusing technology to make a plutonium bomb work. And thhis means that in the final analysis the Allied Legend about the Germans having been "far behind" the Allies in the race for the atom bomb is simply a incorrect in the extreme in the best case, or a deliberate lie in the worst. But the fuses raise another frightening specter: What were the Germansdeveloping such highly sophisticated fuses for? Infrared heat-seeking rockets, which they had developed, would be one answer,

13 Q.v. Hydrick, op. cit, pp. 46-51, for a detailed discussion of this issue and the historical problems it poses for the Allied Legend.

14 Ibid., p. 46.

15 Ibid.

16 As I observed in my previous book, The Giza Death Star Deployed, Dr.Luis Alvarez also had some other strange distinctions to his credit, being one of the scientists allegedly involved with the alleged Roswell "UFO" crash, theCIA's subsequent "Robertson Panel" in the 1950s on UFOs and governmentpolicy, and subsequent cosmic ray experiments inside the 2nd Pyramid at Giza.

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and of course an implosion device to compress critical mass would be another.

But what about the other missing German uranium mentioned previously? The mission of the U-234 and its precious cargo thus raises certain other questions, and highlights other possibilities in this regard. It is a fact that throughout the war Germany and Japan both conducted long-range exchanges of officers and technology via aircraft and submarine - the exchange of technology being mostly a one-sided affair from Germany to Japan. It is conceivable that many of these voyages - just as with the U-234 - would have included similar transfers of uranium stocks and high technology to Japan. Some of the missing uranium must therefore surely be looked for in the Far East, in the Japanese atom bomb program.17

Similarly, during the war both Germany and Italy undertook long-range flights to Japan, the Germans using their special long- range heavy lift transport aircraft such as the Ju-290 for polar flights. It is conceivable that these flights and their Italian counterparts also involved the exchange of officers and technology, if not a small amount of raw material as well. Some of the missing uranium probably also fell into the hands of the Soviets as the Russian armies steamrollered into Eastern Europe and finally into what would become the Soviet "eastern" zone of occupation in Germany.

But why, after traveelling under radio silence from Germany, did the U-234 finally surrender its precious uranium, fuses, and "water", when its obvious destination was Japan? This is an intriguing question, and one taht unfortunately cannot be answered here except briefly. Again, Carteer Hydrick's superb research elaborates one highly probable hypothesis: U-234 was handed over to the US authorities on the orders of none other than Martin Bormann, in a maneuver designed to secure his and others' freedom after the war, and as part of a deliberate plan to continue Nazism and its agendas and research underground.18 It is thus, on this view,

17Q.v. chapter 7.

18 Q.v. part two. The allegation that Bormann's action was a component of this plan is my own, and not Hydrick's although Hydrick also clearly suggests a connection. This "Bormann hypothesis" of the events leading up to the U-234's

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the first visible, and crucial, element of the emerging Operation Paperclip, the transfer of technology ami scientists from the collapsing Third Reich to the United States. There, the German scientists and engineers could, would, and did continue their lines of esoter i c research and development of high technology and sophisticated weaponry, with a similar moral and ideological effect on the culture at large as occurred in Nazi Germany.

And finally, of course, as we have already seen, some of the missing uranium ended up in the German atom bomb program itself, enriched, and refined, and probably assembled and tested - if not used - in actual bombs themselves.

surrender is a major component of Hydrick's work, spanning several pages of meticulous research.

I'd only once, through the Carter Hydrick book, come across this Nazi atom bomb stuff before now several reminders in the same week!
Perhaps it was not rocket scientists the US wanted in 1945 that made them want to do a deal with Reinhard Gehlen, Martin Bormann etc... but nukes?
With some of the more interesting looking comments

Doug Deitrich is the guy I referred to who came across US Archives of Nazi A-bomb use against the Soviets in Pomerania late in the War. Goggle for﻿ him and you should find it.

Tazjet100 3 months ago
According﻿ to a US man named Deitrich who publishes on some website somewhere he was formerly a US archivist and had to destroy archived records of Nazi nuclear weapons used against the Soviets in Pomerania so perhaps they actually did do so? Stalin however frequently threatened retaliation with poison gas and the Germans had too little rubber for gas masks.

Tazjet100 3 months ago
There were two different German A-bombs, first the Schumann Trinks tactical nuke using Li-6 Deuteride to create a plasma pinch to explode a small Uranium 233 target. The second was an SS project with Dr Ing﻿ Zippermayer & Dr Alfred Klemm (Operation Hexenkessel) adapting a coal dust Fuel Air Explosive with Lithium 6 and Trittium to cause a small thermonuclear blast. Production of the SS weapon commenced 8 March 1945 following a meeting near Ohrdruf, Thuringia (CIOS report 207/7//23/45)

Tazjet100 3 months ago
Yes German Army Ordnance tested at least two﻿ tactical nuclear warheads weight 5 kilograms intended according to Dornberger (in CSDIC evidence given at Nuremberg) as warheads for the V-2. However Churchill warned Hitler through channels in May and August1944 that UK would retaliate with Anthrax if a single nuke was used against England. USA warned Hitler through Lisbon in July 44 that Dresden would suffer A-bomb attack unless he negotiated peace secret talks (via Lisbon)

And one for luck
Hitler's Bomb (1992 Documentary)
Published on 18 Jan 2013
In December 1938, in Berlin, a simple chemical experiment showed for the first time that the atom can be split, releasing immense power. Within months, the Wehrmacht had started research into nuclear weapons. The Germns were the first to start work on the atom bomb. The programme investigates the reasons why Hitler was not the first leader to use it, drawing on new evidence gathered by historian Mark Walker. Dramatised scenes, eyewitness accounts from Allied and German scientists, interviews and archive footage are all employed.

German nuclear experts believe they have found nuclear waste from Hitler’s secret atom bomb programme in a crumbling mine near Hanover.

More than 126,000 barrels of nuclear material lie rotting over 2,000 feet below ground in an old salt mine.

Rumour has it that the remains of nuclear scientists who worked on the Nazi programme are also there, their irradiated bodies burned in secret by S.S. men sworn to secrecy.

A statement by a boss of the Asse II nuclear fuel dump, just discovered in an archive, said how in 1967 'our association sank radioactive wastes from the last war, uranium waste, from the preparation of the German atom bomb.'

This has sent shock waves through historians who thought that the German atomic programme was nowhere near advanced enough in WW2 to have produced nuclear waste in any quantities.

It has also triggered a firestorm of uncertainty among locals, especially given Germany’s paranoia post-Fukushima.

Germany was the first western nation to announce the closure of all its atomic power plants following the disaster at the Japanese facility following the catastrophic earthquake and Tsunami in March.

There are calls to remove all the nuclear material stored within the sealed site but this would cost billions of pounds.

Yet the thought of Nazi atomic bomb material stored underground has made headlines across Germany - and the country’s Greenpeace movement has backed a call for secret documents relating to the dump to be released to the state parliament from sealed archives in Berlin.

It was in January of 1939, nine months before the outbreak of the Second World War, that German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann published the results of an historic experiment about nuclear fission.

The German 'uranium project' began in earnest shortly after Germany’s invasion of Poland in September.

Army physicist Kurt Diebner led a team tasked to investigate the military applications of fission. By the end of the year the physicist Werner Heisenberg had calculated that nuclear fission chain reactions might be possible.

Although the war hampered their work, by the fall of the Third Reich in 1945 Nazi scientists had achieved a significant enrichment in samples of uranium.

Mark Walker, a US expert on the Nazi programme said: 'Because we still don’t know about these projects, which remain cloaked in WW2 secrecy, it isn’t safe to say the Nazis fell short of enriching enough uranium for a bomb. Some documents remain top secret to this day.

'Claims that a nuclear weapon was tested at Ruegen in October 1944 and again at Ohrdruf in March 1945 leave open a question, did they or didn’t they?'

Ruegen is a Baltic island and Ohrdruf a top-secret bunker complex in Thuringia where local legend has it that an A-bomb was tested by the Nazis in the dying days of the war.

How close was Hitler to an atomic bomb? A German historian claims he was much closer than previously believed.

The United States needed 125,000 people, including six future Nobel Prize winners, to develop the atomic bombs that exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The uranium enrichment facility alone, including its security zone, was the size of the western German city of Frankfurt. Dubbed the Manhattan project, the quest ultimately cost the equivalent of about $30 billion.

In his new book, "Hitler's Bomb," Berlin historian Rainer Karlsch claims Nazi Germany almost achieved similar results with only a handful of physicists and a fraction of the budget. The author writes that German physicists and members of the military conducted three nuclear weapons tests shortly before the end of World War II, one on the German island of Ruegen in the fall of 1944 and two in the eastern German state of Thuringia in March 1945. The tests, writes Karlsch, claimed up to 700 lives.

If these theories were accurate, history would have to be rewritten. Ever since the Allies occupied the Third Reich's laboratories and interrogated Germany's top physicists working with wunderkind physicist Werner Heisenberg and his colleague Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, it's been considered certain that Hitler's scientists were a long way from completing a nuclear weapon.

Karlsch's publisher, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, is already issuing brazen claims about the "sensational results of the latest historic research." The Third Reich, says the publishing house, was "on the verge of winning the race to acquire the first functioning nuclear weapon." Even before the book was published, the generally reserved publishing house sent press kits to the media, in which it claimed that the author had solved "one of the great mysteries of the Third Reich."

The book is being presented Monday at an elaborately staged press conference. Karlsch, an unaffiliated academic, plans an extensive author's tour.

Critical Mass
The Real Story Of The Birth Of The Atomic Bomb And The Nuclear Age
by Carter P. Hydrick
1998
Part One - The Uranium Bomb
Chapter One - U-234/U235

"The most important and secret item of cargo, the uranium oxide, which I believe was radioactive, was loaded into one of the vertical steel tubes [of German U-boat U-234].... Two Japanese officers... [were]... painting a description in black characters on the brown paper wrapping.... Once the inscription U235 (the scientific designation for enriched uranium, the type required to make a bomb - author's note) had been painted on the wrapping of a package, it would then be carried over...and stowed in one of the six vertical mine shafts." [i]
Wolfgang Hirschfeld
Chief Radio Operator of U-234

"I just got a shipment in of captured material.... I have just talked to Vance and they are taking it off the ship.... I have about 80 cases of U powder in cases. He (Vance) is handling all of that now."iii
Telephone transcript between Manhattan Project security officers
Major Smith and Major Traynor, 14 June,1945.

The traditional history of the atomic bomb accepts as an unimportant footnote the arrival of U-234 on United States shores, and admits the U-boat carried uranium oxide along with its load of powerful passengers and war-making materials. The accepted history also acknowledges these passengers were whisked away to Washington for interrogation and the cargo was quickly commandeered for use elsewhere. The traditional history even concedes that two Japanese officers were onboard U-234 and that they committed a form of unconventional Samurai suicide rather than be captured by their enemies.

The traditional history denies, however, that the uranium on board U-234 was enriched and therefore easily usable in an atomic bomb. The accepted history asserts there is no evidence that the uranium stocks of U-234 were transferred into the Manhattan Project, although recent suggestions have hinted that this may have occurred. And the traditional history asserts that the bomb components on board U-234 arrived too late to be included in the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan. The documentation indicates quite differently on all accounts.

Before U-234 had landed at Portsmouth - before it even left Europe - United States and British intelligence knew U-234 was on a mission to Japan and that it carried important passengers and cargo.iv A portion of the cargo, especially, was of a singular nature. According to U-234's chief radio operator, Wolfgang Hirschfeld, who witnessed the loading of the U-boat:

The most important and secret item of cargo, the uranium oxide, which I believe was highly radioactive, was loaded into one of the vertical steel tubes one morning in February, 1945. Two Japanese officers were to travel aboard U-234 on the voyage to Tokyo: Air Force Colonel Genzo Shosi, an aeronautical engineer, and Navy Captain Hideo Tomonaga, a submarine architect who, it will be recalled, had arrived in France aboard U-180 about eighteen months previously with a fortune in gold for the Japanese Embassy in Berlin.

I saw these two officers seated on a crate on the forecasting engaged in painting a description in black characters on the brown paper wrapping gummed around each of a number of containers of uniform size. At the time I didn't see how many containers there were, but the Loading Manifest showed ten. Each case was a cube, possibly steel and lead, nine inches along each side and enormously heavy. Once the inscription U235 had been painted on the wrapping of a package, it would then be carried over to the knot of crewmen under the supervision of Sub-Lt Pfaff and the boatswain, Peter Scholch, and stowed in one of the six vertical mineshafts.v

Hirschfeld's straightforward account of the uranium being "highly radioactive" - he later witnessed the storage tubes being tested with Geiger counters,vi - and labeled "U235" provides profoundly important information about this cargo. U235 is the scientific designation of enriched uranium - the type of uranium required to fuel an atomic bomb. While the uranium remained a secret from all but the highest levels within the United States until after the surrender of U-234, a captured German ULTRA encoder/decoder had allowed the Western Allies to intercept and decode German and Japanese radio transmissions. Some of these captured signals had already identified the U-boat as being on a special mission to Japan and even identified General Kessler and much of his cortege as likely to be onboard, but the curious uranium was never mentioned. The strictest secrecy was maintained, nonetheless, around the U-boat.
As early as 13 May, the day before U-234 was actually boarded by the Sutton's prize crew, orders had already been dispatched that commanded special handling of the passengers and crew of U-234 when it was surrendered:

Press representatives may be permitted to interview officers and men of German submarines that surrender. This message applies only to submarines that surrender. It does not apply to other prisoners of war. It does not apply to prisoners of the U-234. Prisoners of the U-234 must not be interviewed by press representatives.vii

Two days later, while the Sutton was slowly steaming toward Portsmouth with U-234 at her side, more orders were received. "Documents and personnel of U-234 are most important and any and all doubtful personnel should be sent here,"viii the commander of naval operations in Washington, D.C. ordered. The same day, the commander in chief of the Navy instructed, "Maintain prisoners U-234 incommunicado and send them under Navy department representative to Washington for interrogation."ix

The effort to keep U-234 under wraps was only partially successful. Reporters had been allowed to interview prisoners from previous U-boats, and, in fact, were allowed to interview captured crews from succeeding U-boats, as well. When the press discovered U-234 was going to be off limits, a cry and hue went up that took two days to settle. Following extended negotiations, a compromise was struck between the Navy brass and the press core.x

The reporters were allowed to take photographs of the people disembarking the boat when it landed, but no talking to the prisoners was permitted.xi When they landed at the pier, the prisoners walked silently through the gawking crowd and climbed into buses, to be driven out of the spotlight and far from the glaring eyes of history. On 23 May, the cargo manifest of U-234 was translatedxii by the office of Naval Intelligence, quickly triggering a series of events. On the second page of the manifest, halfway down the page, was the entry "10 cases, 560 kilograms, uranium oxide."

Whoever first read the entry and understood the frightening capabilities and potential purpose of uranium must have been stunned by the entry. Certainly questions were asked. Was this the first shipment of uranium to Japan or had others already slipped by? Did the Japanese have the capacity to use it? Could they build a bomb?

Whatever the answers, within four days personnel from the Office of Naval Intelligence had brought U-234's second watch officer, Karl Pfaff - who had not been brought to Washington with the original batch of high-level prisoners, but who had overseen loading of the U-boat in Germany - to Washington and interrogated him. They quickly radioed Portsmouth:

Pfaff prepared manifest list and knows kind documents and
cargo in each tube. Pfaff states...uranium oxide loaded in
gold cylinders and as long as cylinders not opened can be
handled like crude TNT. These containers should not be
opened as substance will become sensitive and dangerous.xiii

The identification that the uranium was stowed in gold-lined cylinders and that it would become "sensitive and dangerous" when unpacked provides clear substantiation of radio officer Hirschfeld's assertion that the uranium was labeled with the title U235. Uranium that has had its proportion of the isotope U235 increased compared to the more common isotope of uranium, U238, is known as enriched uranium. When that enrichment becomes 70 percent or above, it is bomb-grade uranium. The process of enriching uranium during the war was highly technical and very expensive - it still is.

Upon first reading that the uranium on board U-234 was stored in gold-lined cylinders, this author tracked down Clarence Larsen, former director of the leading uranium enrichment process at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the Manhattan Project's uranium enrichment facilities were housed. In a telephone conversation, I asked Mr. Larsen what, if anything, would be the purpose of shipping uranium in gold-lined containers.xiv

Mr. Larsen remembered that the Oak Ridge program used gold trays when working with enriched uranium. He explained that, because uranium enrichment was a very costly process, enriched uranium needed to be protected jealously, but because it is very corrosive, it is easily invaded by any but the most stable materials, and would then become contaminated. To prevent the loss to contamination of the invaluable enriched uranium, gold was used. Gold is one of the most stable substances on earth. While expensive, Mr. Larsen explained, the cost of gold was a drop in the bucket compared to the value of enriched uranium. Would raw uranium, rather than enriched uranium, be stored in gold containers, I asked? Not likely, Mr. Larsen responded. The value of raw uranium is, and was at the time, inconsequential compared to the cost of gold.

Assuming the Germans invested roughly the same amount of money as the Manhattan Project to enrich their uranium, which it appears they did,xv the cost of the U235 on board the submarine was somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000 an ounce; by far the most expensive substance on earth. The fact that the enriched uranium had the capacity to deliver world dominance to the first country that processed and used it made it priceless. A long voyage with the U235 stowed in anything but gold could have cost the German/Japanese atomic bomb program dearly.

In addition to the gold-lined shipping containers corroborating Hirschfeld's identification of the uranium as U235, the description of the uranium's characteristics when its container was opened also tends to support the conclusion the uranium was enriched. Uranium of all kinds is not only corrosive, but it is toxic if swallowed. In its raw state, however, which is 99.3 percent U238, the substance poses little threat to man as long as he does not eat it. The stock of raw uranium that eventually was processed by the Manhattan Project originally had been stored in steel drums and was sitting in the open at a Staten Island storage facility.xvi Much of the German raw uranium discovered in salt mines at the end of the war also was stored in steel drums, many of them broken open.

The material was loaded into heavy paper sacks and carried from the storage area by apparently unprotected G.I.s.xvii Since then, more precautions have been taken in handling raw uranium, but at the time, caution was minimal and raw uranium was considered to be relatively safe.xviii For the Navy to note the uranium would become "sensitive and dangerous" and should be "handled like crude TNT" when it was unpacked tends to indicate that the uranium enclosed was, in fact, enriched uranium. Uranium enriched significantly in U235 is radioactive and therefore should be handled with appropriate caution, as the communiqué described.

By 16 June 1945, a second cargo manifest had been prepared for U-234, this time by the United States Navy. But the uranium was not on the list. It was not even marked as shipped out or having once been on hand. It was never mentioned. It was gone - as if it never existed.
Where did the uranium go? Eleven days after U-234 was escorted into Portsmouth, and four days after Pfaff identified its location on the U-boat, a team was selected to oversee the offloading of U-234. Portsmouth received the following message:

Lieut. Comdr. Karl B Reese USNR, Lieut (JG) Edward P McDermott USNR and Major John E Vance CE USA [Corps of of Engineers, United States Army (the Manhattan Project's parent organization) - author's note] will report to commandant May 30th Wednesday in connection with cargo U-234.

It is contemplated that shipment will be made by ship to
ordnance investigation laboratory NAVPOWFAC Indian
Head Maryland if this is feasible.xix

The order, dispatched by the chief of naval operations, is revealing if not outright startling for the selection of one member of its three-man team. Including Major Vance of the Army Corps of Engineers in what was otherwise an all Navy operation seems a telling selection. The military services of the United States, as in most other countries, were highly competitive with one another. True, U-234's cargo included a mixed bag of aeronautics, rocketry and armor-piercing technology that the Army could use, too, but the Navy had programs for all of these materials and surely would have done its own analysis first and then possibly shared the information with its service brothers.
Someone, somewhere at a very high level, appears to have seen that the Army was brought into the scavenging operation that had become U-234; not just any Army group, but the group that oversees the Manhattan Project - the Corps of Engineers.

Major John E. Vance was not only from the Corps of Engineers, the Army department under which the Manhattan Project operated, but, if a telephone transcript taken from Manhattan Project archives refers to the same "Vance" as the Major assigned to offload U-234 - as it appears to - then he was part of America's super-secret atomic bomb project, as well. The transcript is of a conversation between Manhattan Project intelligence officers Smith and Traynor and was recorded two weeks after "Major Vance" was assigned to the team responsible for unloading the material captured on U-234.

Smith: I just got a shipment in of captured material and there were 39 drums and 70 wooden barrels and all of that is liquid. What I need is a test to see what the concentration is and a set of recommendations as to disposal. I have just talked to Vance and they are taking it off the ship and putting it in the 73rd Street Warehouse. In addition to that I have about 80 cases of U powder in cases. He (Vance) is handling all of that now. Can you do the testing and how quickly can it be done? All we know is that it ranges from 10 to 85 percent and we want to know which and what.

Traynor: Can you give me what was in those cases?
Smith: U powder. Vance will take care of the testing of that.

Traynor: The other stuff is something else?
Smith: The other is water.xx

U-234's cargo manifest reveals that, besides its uranium, among its cargo was 10 "bales" of drums and 50 "bales" of barrels. The barrels are noted in the manifest to have contained benzyl cellulose, a very stable substancexxi that may have been used as a biological shield from radiation or as a coolant or moderator in a liquid reactor.xxii The manifest lists the drums as containing "confidential material." As surprising as it may seem, this secret substance may have been the "water" that Major Smith noted in his discussion with Major Traynor. Why would Major Smith want the water tested? And what did he mean when he said that its concentration ranged "from 10 to 85 percent and we want to know which and what"?

The leaders of the German project to breed plutonium had decided to use heavy water, or deuterium oxide, as the moderator for a plutonium-breeding liquid reactor. The procedure of creating heavy water results in regular water molecules picking up an additional hydrogen atom. The percentage of water molecules with the extra hydrogen represents the level of concentration of the heavy water. Thus Major Smith's seemingly overzealous concern about water and his question about concentration is predictable if Smith suspected the material was intended for a nuclear reactor. And using heavy water as a major element of their plutonium breeding reactor project, it is easy to see why the Germans labeled the drums "confidential material." The evidence indicates that U-234 - if the captured cargo being tested by "Vance" was from U-234, which seems very probable given all considerations - carried components for making not only a uranium bomb, but a plutonium bomb, also.

Further corroborating the connection of the barrels and drums as those that were taken from U-234 is a handwritten note found in the Southeast national archives held at East Point, Georgia.xxiii Dated 16 June, 1945, two days after Smith's and Traynor's telephone conversation, the note described how 109 barrels and drums - the exact total given in the Smith/Traynor transcript - were to be tested with geiger counters to determine if they were radioactive. The note also included instructions that an "intelligence agent cross out any markings on drums and bbls. [sic. - abbreviation for barrels - authors note] and number them serially from 1 to 109 and make note of what was crossed out." The note goes on to say that this recommendation was given to and approved by Lt.Colonel Parsons, General Groves' right-hand man on the military side of the Manhattan Project. And lastly, the writer of the note had called Major Smith, apparently to report back to him, leading one to believe the note's author may have been Major Traynor.

Was the captured cargo discussed by Smith and Traynor from U-234? The presence of a Mr. "Vance" who was in charge of "U powder," almost certainly determines that such was the case. The documents under consideration and the conversation they detail are from Manhattan Project files and are about men who worked for the Manhattan Project. Using the letter "U" as an abbreviation for uranium was widespread throughout the Manhattan Project. That there could have been another "Vance" who was working with uranium powder - especially "captured" uranium powder - seems unlikely even for coincidence.

And the fact that the contents of the barrels listed on the U-boat manifest were identified as containing a substance likely to be used in a nuclear reactor, benzyl cellulose, and that the barrels in the Smith/Traynor transcript and the untitled note - as well as the drums - were tested for radioactivity by geiger counter, certainly links the "captured" materials to no other source than U-234. The new-found evidence taken en mass demonstrates that, despite the traditional history, the uranium captured from U-234 was enriched uranium that was commandeered into the Manhattan Project more than a month before the final uranium slugs were assembled for the uranium bomb.

The Oak Ridge records of its chief uranium enrichment effort - the magnetic isotope separators known as calutrons - show that a week after Smith's and Traynor's 14 June conversation, the enriched uranium output at Oak Ridge nearly doubled - after six months of steady output.[xxiv] Edward Hammel, a metallurgist who worked with Eric Jette at the Chicago Met Lab, where the enriched uranium was fabricated into the bomb slugs, corroborated this report of late-arriving enriched uranium. Mr. Hammel told the author that very little enriched uranium was received at the laboratory until just two or three weeks - certainly less than a month - before the bomb was dropped.[xxv] The Manhattan Project had been in desperate need of enriched uranium to fuel its lingering uranium bomb program. Now it is almost conclusively proven that U-234 provided the enriched uranium needed, as well as components for a plutonium breeder reactor.

Notes:

i Wolfgang Hirschfeld and Geoffrey Brooks, Hirschfeld:The Story of A U-boat NCO 1940-1946, pp. 198,199

xxi Personal telephone conversation between the author and Dr. Susan Frost, PhD, Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, College of Medicine, University of Florida, 30 August 1999, also Dr. Wentworth, University of Houston

Crikey - more evidence - of course the Germans probably have a secret nuclear weapon programme to this day
Like the Israelis before they were discovered

Hitler 'tested small atom bomb'
By Ray Furlong - BBC News, Berlin Monday, 14 March, 2005, 17:33 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4348497.stm
A German historian has claimed in a new book presented on Monday that Nazi scientists successfully tested a tactical nuclear weapon in the last months of World War II.
Rainer Karlsch said that new research in Soviet and also Western archives, along with measurements carried out at one of the test sites, provided evidence for the existence of the weapon.
"The important thing in my book is the finding that the Germans had an atomic reactor near Berlin which was running for a short while, perhaps some days or weeks," he told the BBC.
"The second important finding was the atomic tests carried out in Thuringia and on the Baltic Sea."
Mr Karlsch describes what the Germans had as a "hybrid tactical nuclear weapon" much smaller than those dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

'Bright light'
He said the last test, carried out in Thuringia on 3 March 1945, destroyed an area of about 500 sq m, killing several hundred prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates.
The weapons were never used because they were not yet ready for mass production. There were also problems with delivery and detonation systems.
"We haven't heard about this before because only small groups of scientists were involved, and a lot of the documents were classified after they were captured by the Allies," said Karlsch.
"I found documents in Russian and Western archives, as well as in private German ones."
One of these is a memo from a Russian spy, brought to the attention of Stalin just days after the last test. It cites "reliable sources" as reporting "two huge explosions" on the night of 3 March.
Karlsch also cites German eyewitnesses as reporting light so bright that for a second it was possible to read a newspaper, accompanied by a sudden blast of wind.
The eyewitnesses, who were interviewed on the subject by the East German authorities in the early 1960s, also said they suffered nose-bleeds, headaches, and nausea for days afterwards.
Karlsch also pointed to measurements carried out recently at the test site that found radioactive isotopes.

Sceptical response
His book has provoked huge interest in Germany, but also scepticism.
It has been common knowledge for decades that the Nazis carried out atomic experiments, but it has been widely believed they were far from developing an atomic bomb.
"The eyewitnesses he puts forward are either unreliable or they are not reporting first-hand information; allegedly key documents can be interpreted in various ways," said the influential news weekly Der Spiegel.
"Karlsch displays a catastrophic lack of understanding of physics," wrote physicist Michael Schaaf, author of a previous book about Nazi atomic experiments, in the Berliner Zeitung newspaper.
"Karlsch has done us a service in showing that German research into uranium went further than we'd thought up till now, but there was not a German atom bomb," he added.
It has also been pointed out that the United States employed thousands of scientists and invested billions of dollars in the Manhattan Project, while Germany's "dirty bomb" was allegedly the work of a few dozen top scientists who wanted to change the course of the war.
Karlsch himself acknowledged that he lacked absolute proof for his claims, and said he hoped his book would provoke further research.
But in a press statement for the book launch, he is defiant.
"It's clear there was no master plan for developing atom bombs. But it's also clear the Germans were the first to make atomic energy useable, and that at the end of this development was a successful test of a tactical nuclear weapon."

"We still have things that need to be finished, and when they are finished, they will turn the tide " Adolf Hitler, March 13, 1945, addressing officers of the German Ninth Army.

A. An Unusual Exchange at Nuremberg

At the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals after the war, an amazing exchange occurred between former architect cum Nazi minister of armaments, Albert Speer, and Mr. Jackson, the chief American prosecutor.

JACKSON: Now, I have certain information, which was placed in my hands, of an experiment which was carried out near Auschwitz and I would like to ask you if you heard about it or knew about it.

The purpose of the experiment was to find a quick and complete way of destroying people without the delay and trouble of shooting and gassing and burning, as it had been carried out, and this is the experiment, as I am advised.

A village, a small village was provisionally erected, with temporary structures, and in it approximately 20,000 Jews were put. By means of this newly invented weapon of destruction, these 20,000 people were eradicated almost instantaneously, and in such a way that there was no trace left of them; that is developed, the explosive developed, temperatures of from 400 degrees to 500 degrees centigrade and destroyed them without leaving any trace at all.

Do you know about that experiment? SPEER: No, and I consider it utterly improbable. If we had had such a weapon under preparation, I should have known about it. But we did not have such a weapon. It is clear that in chemical warfare attempts were made on both sides to carry out research on all the weapons one

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could think of, because one did not know which party would start chemical warfare first...1

This exchange is remarkable in several respects, not the least of which is that its "explosive contents" are almost entirely overlooked in standard histories of the war and its aftermath.

Previous chapters have presented evidence that there was a large, and very secret, uranium enrichment program inside Nazi Germany, beginning sometime ca. late 1940 or early 1941, and continuing, apparently unabated - as the surrender of the U-234

would imply - right up to the end of the war. Zinsser's affidavit goes further, and alleges an actual atom bomb test, complete with descriptions of all the signatures of an atom bomb: mushroom cloud, electromagnetic pulse effects, and continued combustion of nuclear materials in the cloud. The Japanese military attache in Stockholm further corroborated the story with undeniably fantastic allegations of the German use of some type of weapon of mass destruction on the Eastern Front ca. 1942 (the siege of Sevastopol in the Crimea), to 1943, just days prior to the massive German offensive at Kursk.

Now, at Nuremberg, we have a third corroboration of the use of some type of weapon of awesome explosive power in the east by the Germans, this time from no less an individual than the chief American prosecutor at the Tribunal. And in his case, it is apparent that he is relating information gathered by intelligence. It is worth pausing to consider the implications of the exchange between Jackson and former armaments Reichminister Speer.

We shall begin with Speer. Albert Speer was successor to Dr. Fritz Todt as minister of armaments and production for the entire Third Reich. Speer's accomplishments are not to be gainsaid, it was largely owing to his efforts to organize the huge Nazi industrial capacity and streamline its efficiency that the wartime production of Germany increased dramatically under his oversight. In fact, in all

pertinent areas of German industrial war production, Specr managed to achieve peak production levels in all categories during the same precise period that Allied strategic bombing also was at its height.

His methods in achieving this feat were simple but effective: German industry was decentralized and dispersed into smaller plants, and, to the extent possible, moved into underground bomb-proof factories. "Modular" construction techniques were employed wherever possible. For example, German U-boats were produced in modular fashion, in sections, far inland in such factories, and transported to ports for final assembly. The deadly Type XXI U-boats with their exotic and revolutionary underwater propulsion systems - allowing an underwater cruising speed in excess of 21 knots, an unheard of speed for that time - were produced in this fashion at the end of the war.

But notably absent from Speer's comments is any indication that he was even aware of the huge extent of the German atom- bomb project and its enormous uranium enrichment program. Lofty as his position in the Nazi hierarchy was, it would appear that Speer was entirely in the dark on the programs and totally oblivious to any progress that had been made. The reason for Speer's ignorance will be addressed in due course (and by Speer himself!), but suffice it to say, the German government, like its American counterpart, had rigidly "compartmentalized" its atom bomb production program and placed it under the tightest security. But clearly, by the time of the exchange between Jackson and him, Speer and the whole world had heard of the atom bomb. So Speer appears to obfuscate his answer somewhat by redirecting the topic to chemical warfare.

The question of a revolutionary chemical explosive is not, however, as far-fetched as it might at first seem, for Jackson's comments suggest it by referring to temperatures of 400 to 500 degrees centigrade, far below the enormous temperatures produced by an atomic explosion. Was Speer obfuscating his answer, or was Jackson his question?

The prosecutor's statements and question also corroborate in loose fashion another component of our developing story, for he

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clearly alludes to the use of some type of weapon of massdestruction, possessed of enormous explosive power, in the east,and significantly, at or near Auschwitz, site of the I.G. Farben"Buna factory." It is to be noted that the Nazis had apparently gone so Far as to build an entire mock town and placed concentration camp inmates in it, an obvious though barbaric move to study the effects of the weapon on structures and people. His statements, along with those of the Japanese military attache in Stockholm cited in the previous chapter, afford a serious clue - and one often overlooked even by researchers into this 'alternative history" of thewar - into the nature of the Nazi's secret weapons development and use, for it would appear that insofar as the third Reich possessed weapons of mass destruction of extraordinary power, atomic or otherwise, they were tested and used against enemies consider bythe Nazi ideology to be racially inferior, and that means, in effect,they were used on the Eastern Front theater of the Reich's military operations.

Thus we are also afforded a speculative answer to the all- important question: If the Germans had the bomb, why didn't they use it? And the answer is, if they had it, they were far more likely to use it on Russia than on the Western allies, since the war in the East was conceived and intended by Hitler to be a genocidal war from the outset. And it certainly was that: fully one half of the approximately fifty million fatalities of World War Two were inflicted by the efficient Nazi war machine on Soviet Russia.

The use of such weapons on the Eastern Front by the Germans would also tentatively explain why more is not known about it, for it is highly unlikely that Stalin's Russia would have publicly acknowledged the fact. To do so would have been a propaganda disaster for Stalin's government. Faced with an enemy of superior tactical and operational competence in conventional arms, the RedArmy often had to resort to threats of execution against its ownsoldiers just to maintain order and discipline in its ranks and prevent mass desertion. Acknowledgment of the existence and use of such weapons by the mortal enemy of Communist Russia couldconceivably have ruined Russian morale and cost Stalin the war, and perhaps even toppled his government. As we proceed further

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into our investigation of German secret weaponry, its connection to Nazi ideology, and its use on the eastern front, we will encounter more and more examples of the strange story or event.

For now, however, we note the strangely ambiguous quality of Mr. Jackson's remarks. "Now I have," he begins, "'certain' information, which was placed in my hands, of an experiment which was carried out near Auschwitz..." By the time Mr. Jackson uttered these remarks, Hans Zinsser's statements were almost a year old, raising the possibility that Zinsser's affidavit may itself have been the "certain information" alluded to by Jackson, who may have intentionally altered its correct location. In this regard, it is significant that Zinsser expressed mystification that the test took place so close to a populated area. If Jackson deliberately altered the location of the test, he did not alter the nature of its victims. But another possibility is that the event took place where he says it did, "near" Auschwitz.

B. A Marshal, Mussolini, and the First Alleged Test Site at RugenIsland

The question of the location of a possible German atom bomb test comes from five very unlikely sources: an Italian officer, a Russian marshal's translator, and Benito Mussolini himself, an American heavy cruiser, and an island off the coast of northern Germany in the Baltic Sea.

Before he and his mistress Clara Petacci were murdered by Communist partisans, and then later hung from meat hooks in Milan to be pelted with rocks from an angry mob. Benito Mussolini, by the end of the war reduced to a mere puppet of Hitler and governing a "Fascist republic" in German-controlled northern Italy, spoke often of the German "wonder weapons":

The wonder weapons are the hope. It is laughable and senseless for us to threaten at this moment, without a basis in reality for these threats.

The well-known mass destruction bombs are nearly ready. In only a few days, with the utmost meticulous intelligence, Hitler will probably execute this fearful blow, because he will have full

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confidence.... It appear, that there are three bombs -and each has an astonishing operation. The construction of each unit is fearfully complex and of a lengthy time of completion.2

It would be easy to dismiss Mussolini's statements as more delusional and insane ravings of a fascist dictator facing defeat, clinging desperately to forlorn hopes and tattered dreams. It would be easy, were it but for the weird corroboration supplied by one Piotr Ivanovitch Titarenko, a former military translator on the staff of Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, who handled the Japanese capitulation to Russia at the end of the war. As reported in the German magazine Der Spiegel in 1992, Titarenko wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In it, he reported that there were actually three bombs dropped on Japan, one of which, dropped on Nagasaki prior to its actual bombing, did not explode. This bomb was handed over by Japan to the Soviet Union.3

Mussolini and a Soviet marshal's military translator are not the only ones corroborating the strange number of "three bombs", for yet a fourth bomb may actually have been in play at one point, being transported to the Far East on board the US heavy cruiser Indianapolis (CA 35), when the latter sank in 1945.4

These strange testimonies call into question once again the Allied Legend, for as has been seen, the Manhattan Project in late 1944 and early 1945 faced critical shortages of weapons grade uranium, and had yet to solve the fusing problem for the plutonium bomb. So the question is, if these reports are true, where did the extra bomb(s) come from? That three, and possibly four, bombs were ready for use on Japan so quickly would seem to stretch

But the strangest evidence of all comes from the German island of Rugen, and the testimony of Italian officer Luigi Romersa, an eyewitness to the test of a German atom bomb on the island on the night of 11-12 October, 1944, approximately the same time frame as indicated in Zinsser's affidavit, and it is also the same approximate area as Zinsser indicated.

In this context it is also extremely curious that this time frame in 1944 was, for the Allies, a banner year for atomic bomb scares. On Saturday, August 11, 1945, an article in the London Daily Telegraph reported British preparations for German atom bomb attack on London the previous year.

NAZIS' ATOM BOMB PLANS BRITAIN READY A YEAR AGO

Britain prepared for the possibility of an atomic attack on this country by Germany in August, 1944.

It can now be disclosed that details of the expected effect of such a bomb were revealed in a highly secret memorandum which was sent that summer to the chiefs of Scotland Yard, chief constables of provincial forces and senior officials of the defence services.

An elaborate scheme was drawn up by the Ministry of Home Security for prompt and adequate measures to cope with the widespread devastation and heavy casualties if the Germans succeeded in launching atomic bombs on this country.

Reports received from our agents on the Continent early last year indicated that German scientists were experimenting with an atomic bomb in Norway. According to these reports the bomb was launched by catapult, and had an explosive radius of more than two miles.

In view of our own progress in devising an 'atomic' bomb the Government gave the reports serious consideration. Thousands of men and women of the police and defence services were held in readiness for several months until reliable agents in Germany reported that the bomb had been tested and proved a failure.5

The August 1945 London Daily Telegraph Article about a 1944 German Atom Bomb Scare in Britain

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This article, coming as it does a mere two days after the bombing of Nagasaki, and almost a year since the actual alert in Britain was called, deserves careful scrutiny.

First, and most obviously, the alert in Britain was apparently conducted entirely in secret, as law enforcement, defense, and medical personnel were placed on high alert. The reason for security is obvious, since to have signaled a public alert would have notified the Germans that there were Allied spies close enough to the German bomb program to know about its tests.

Second, the site of the alleged test - Norway - is unusual in that the timing of the test would place it a full two years after the British commando raid on the Norsk heavy water plant at Ryukon. This might indicate two things:

(1)

It might indicate that Hitler's interest in maintaining troops in Norway had more to do with the German atom bomb project than anything else, since, if the report was accurate to begin with, it would indicate a large scale German atom bomb effort was underway there;

(2)

Conversely, the report may have been deliberately inaccurate, i.e., there may really have been a test, but one that took place somewhere else.

Third, the presumed "alert" continued from August 1944 "for several months," that is, the alert could conceivably have stretched into October, i.e., into the time frame of the test mentioned in Zinsser's affidavit. Thus, the news account indicates something else: Allied intelligence was aware, and genuinely fearful, of German atom bomb testing.

Fourth, the article mentions that the test concerned a bomb launched from a "catapult". The V-l "buzz bomb", the first generation of the cruise missile, was launched from large steam-driven catapults. Putting two and two together, then, the "Norway" test may have been a test of an atom bomb delivery system based on the V-l, or of an atom bomb itself, or possibly both an atom bomb and its delivery system.

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With these thoughts in mind, we come to the final point. The alert was canceled when the test was proven a failure. The question is, what failed? Was it the bomb itself? The delivery system? orboth? An answer lies, perhaps, in another curious news article that appeared in the British press almost a year earlier, on Wednesday, October 11, 1944, in the London Daily Mail:

BERLIN IS 'SILENT' 60 HOURS STILL NO PHONES

STOCKHOLM, Tuesday

Berlin is still cut off from the rest of Europe to-night. The 60- hours silence began on Sunday morning - and still there is no explanation for the hold-up, which has now lasted longer than on any previous occasion.

The Swedish Foreign Office is unable to ring up its Berlin Legation.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that the major crisis between the Wehrmacht and the Nazi Party has come to a head and that "tremendous events may be expected."

To-day's plane from Berlin to Stockholm arrived four hours late. It carried only Germans, two of whom appeared to be high officials. They looked drawn and pale, and when Swedish reporters approached them they angrily thrust their way out of the Swedish Aero-Transport offices, muttering: "Nothing we can say."

German papers arriving here on to-day's plane seem extraordinarily subdued, with very small headlines.

It is pointed out, however, in responsible quarters that if the stoppage were purely the technical result of bomb damage, as the Germans claimed, it should have been repaired by now.6

The October 1944 Daily Mail Article about Berlin Telephone Service Disruption

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Of course we now know what was not known in October of 1944: when an atomic or thermonuclear bomb is detonated, the extreme electromagnetic pulse knocks out or interferes with electrical equipment for miles from the detonation site, depending on the size of the blast, the proximity of such equipment to it, and the degree of "shielding" such equipment has. For the normal, non-military phone lines in Berlin, the strange disruption of phone service is explainable precisely as the result of such an electromagnetic pulse. But this would imply that such a pulse, if the result of an atom bomb test, be considerably closer to Berlin than Norway. Presumably if telephone service in Berlin was affected by an atom bomb test in Norway, similar disruptions would have occurred in large cities that were much closer to the test, such as Oslo, Copenhagen, or Stockholm. Yet, not such disruptions are mentioned; only Berlin appears to have been affected.7

Thus, if the atom bomb test mentioned in the 1945 London Daily Telegraph article occurred, then one must look for a site considerably closer to Berlin than Norway. The Daily Mail phone service disruption article stands as clear corroboration of the probable test of a German atom bomb sometime in October of 1944, the same time frame as Zinsser's affidavit, and within the time frame mentioned in the Daily Telegraph article about a secret alert in Britain from August of 1944, and continuing for "several months."

But the Daily Mail's phone service disruption article does more: it suggests why the Germans may have considered the test a failure. At that time the effects of nuclear explosions -electromagnetic pulse and disruption of electrical equipment, radioactivity and fallout - were still largely unknown and not well understood. The Berlin telephone service was one of the finest, if not the finest, in the world at the time.8 The Nazis may very well

7 There is another possibly, though extremely unlikely explanation, for the lack of reports in other cities. Very simply, it may reflect a lack of intelligence from those areas.

8 Up to the very end of the war, for example, the cable lines between Berlin and Tokyo remained open, allowing the Japanese to send condolences to the Nazi government even as Russian tanks were rolling over the streets of the city.

77

have been shocked at this curious result of their alleged test of an atomic "wonder weapon", and therefore considered it a "failure" until more tests could be done and the phenomenon of electro-magnetic pulse more fully understood. After all, it would do no good, so to speak, to deploy the "ultimate weapon" only to be unable to receive the telephone call of surrender after having used it! And to the totalitarian and paranoid Nazi state, a disruption of communications from its capital city to its provinces, armed forces, and occupied territories was literally an unthinkable nightmare, being the perfect opportunity for a coup d'etat.

Finally, to round out the newspaper scavenger hunt, a curious series of articles from the London Times between May 15 and May 25, 1945, covered a story about German troops on the Danish Baltic Sea island of Bornholm that refused to surrender to attacking Russian forces.9 Bornholm was within one hundred miles of the German rocket site at Peenemunde, and quite close to an alleged atom bomb test site on the small island of Rugen on the Baltic coast close to the port city of Kiel.

It is here on this island that Italian officer Luigi Romersa was the guest and eyewitness to a German "wonder weapon" test on the night of October 11-12, 1944. After journeying by a night drive for two hours in the rain from Berlin, Romersa reached the island by motorboat. According to his statements to German atom bomb researchers Edgar Meyer and Thomas Mehner, the island was guarded by a special elite unit, which we can only presume was an SS unit, and that admission to the island was only granted by special passes issued directly by the OberKommano Der

Most communications lines in Berlin were laid underground by the Deutsche Reichspost before the war for the express purpose of mitigating phone service disruption during bombing attacks. If the phone service disruption was therefore a result of EMP from a nuclear detonation, then the size of the detonation would have to have been rather large to cause this lengthy disruption of the entire city's telephone service for that length of time, shielded as the lines were by being underground. The other alternative, a second coup attempt, may be a possible explanation, but there is no mention of such an attempt in any literature.

9 Meyer and Mehner, Das Geheimnis der deutschen Atombombe, p. 51.

78

Wehrmacht (OKW).10 At this point, it is best to cite Romersa's own words:

There were four of us: my two attendants, a man with worker's clothes, and I. "We will see a test of the disintegration bomb.11 It is the most powerful explosive that has yet been developed. Nothing can withstand it," said one of them. He hardly breathed. He glanced at his watch and waited until noon, the hour for the experiment. Our observation post was a kilometer from the point of the explosion. "We must wait here," the man with the worker's clothes ordered, "until this evening. When it is dark we may leave. The bomb gives off deathly rays, of utmost toxicity. its effective area is much larger than the most powerful conventional bomb. Around 1.5 kilometers...."

Around 4:00 PM, in the twilight, shadows appeared, running toward our bunker. They were soldiers, and they had on a strange type of "diving suit". They entered and quickly shut the door. "Everything is kaput," one of them said, as he removed his protective clothing. We also eventually had to put on white, coarse, fibrous cloaks. I cannot say what material this cloak was made of, but I had the impression that it could have been asbestos, the headgear had a piece of mica-glass12 in front of the eyes.

Having donned this clothing, the observation party then left the bunker and made its way to ground zero:

The houses that I had seen only an hour earlier had disappeared, broken into little pebbles of debris, as we drew nearer ground zero,13 the more fearsome was the devastation. The grass had the same color as leather, the few trees that still stood upright had no more leaves.14

There are peculiarities of Romersa's account that one must mention, if this were the test of nuclear bomb. First, some of the blast damage described is typical for a nuclear weapon: sheering of trees, obliteration of structures, and so on. The protective clothing

worn by the German technicians as well as the polarized glasses also are typical. And the test does appear to have involved use in a "populated area" with houses and so on, in similar fashion to prosecutor Jackson's exchange with Speer, and Zinsser's own comments in his affidavit. However, Romersa, apparently a careful observer, fails to make any mention of a fusion of soil into silicate glassy material that also normally accompanies a nuclear blast close to the ground.

But whatever was tested at Rugen, it does have enough of the signatures of an atom bomb to suggest that this is, in fact, what it was. Most importantly it is to be noted that it coincides with the time frame of Zinsser's affidavit and the phone service outage in Berlin, and the timing of the British alert.15 Finally, it is perhaps quite significant that during this same time frame, Adolf Hitler finally signed an order for the development of the atom bomb. In context, this can only mean that he has given approval to develop more of a weapon already tested.16

C. The Three Corners (Dreiecken) and the Alleged Test at the Troop Parade Ground at Ohrdruf

A more controversial allegation, however, concerns the alleged test of a high yield atom bomb by the SS at the troop parade ground and barracks at Orhdruf, in south central Thuringia in March of 1945. As we shall see, this date too is significant. Shortly after the German reunification in 1989, old rumors of an atom bomb test conducted by the SS late in the war in south central Germany, in what was formerly East Germany, again surfaced. The test is alleged to have taken place on March 4, 1945.17 However, as

15 One significant difference that does emerge is that Zinsser's affidavit places the test close to the hours of twilight, whereas Romersa has it taking place in full daylight. The latter would make sense, from a security point of view, since daylight would tend to mask the visibility of the blast more effectively from prying eyes in the distance.

16 Rose, op. cit., notes that Hitler actually gave a formal order in October of 1944 for the immediate development of the atom bomb.

17 Meyer and Mehner, Hitler und die „ Bombe " , p. 226.

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we shall soon see, there is an additional problem associated with the allegation of this test near the Three Corners. The Three Corners part of the story begins with a component of

the Allied Legend. According to former Last German sources, one plausible reason for the swift advance of US General Patton's divisions on this region of Thuringia was that the last Fuhrer Headquarters (Fuhrerhauptquartier), a facility code-named "Jasmine" by the Germans, was located in the vast underground

facilities at Jonastal.18 "There exists an American document, under point number four, that informs us that the last (Fuhrer Headquarters) was not at the Obersalzburg, but in the region of Ohrdruf,"19 that is, in the region of the Three Corners. Thus, the Legend is elaborated: Patton's drive was to cut off the escape route

of fleeing Nazis and seize Hitler's last secret underground headquarters, and, presumably, the Grand Prize himself. This entire facili t y was part of a vast complex of underground sites under the command structure of the SS, and named "S III" - a designation not without its own suggestive possibilities as we shall discover in subsequent parts of this work - and the Fuhrer Headquarters was but one component of this complex.20 The problem with the view that this complex was simply a headquarters complex is that SS Obergruppenfuhrer Hans Kammler - a man with whom we shall have much to do later in this work - was directly involved in the construction of all facilities in the region since 1942, thus making it unlikely that they were constructed merely for Hitler's last headquarters, since Kammler was directly involved with the most sensitive areas of the Reich's secret weapons research and development. It is therefore more likely that they were a part of Kammler's vast SS Secret weapons black projects empire.21 There is no mention of any of these facilities in surviving German archives, or, seemingly, any where else for that matter, and yet, they are definitely there for all to see.22

So what were these facilities researching? Almost nothing was known about them until witnesses and relatives of witnesses began to talk after German reunification. One such man was Adolf Bernd Freier who, before his death in Argentina, wrote German researchers Edgar Meyer and Thomas Mehner a letter detailing his knowledge of the facilities gained while he was on the construction staff. There were, Freier alleged, facilities dedicated to special circular aircraft(!), to the "Amerika Raket", the intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States, and research facilities of atomic experiments under the direction of Dr. Kurt Diebner, and a complete underground factory for the production of heavy water!23

But most importantly, Freier alleges that the "atomic weapon" was ready on July 2, 1944!24 What type of atomic weapon is meant here? A "dirty" radiological bomb, designed to spray a vast area with deadly radioactive material but far short of an actual nuclear fission bomb? Or an actual atom bomb itself? Freier's choice of words is not clear. But one thing does stand out, and that is the date of July 2, 1944, the same month as the attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler in the - very aptly named - "Bomb Plot" approximately two weeks later. The consequence of a successful German development of even a radiological bomb might thus be one of the primary motivations for the anti-Hitler conspirators to attempt to remove the Fuhrer when they did, and might explain their hidden logic in assuming that the Allies would negotiate with an anti-Nazi (or at least un-Nazi) provisional German government in spite of the Allies' own demands for an unconditional surrender, for the possession of such a weapon would have given the conspirators considerable negotiation leverage. And if the conspirators knew of the existence of the weapon, and of Hitler's plans to deploy it in actual use, it may have been the final moral compulsion for them to act.

23 Meyer and Mehner, das Geheimnis., p. 242.

24 Ibid., p. 245. According to Freier's allegations, the bomb was ready on July 2, 1944, but not its delivery system, meaning presumably the "Amerikaraket" (p. 249).

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In any case, the most problematical aspect of the alleged test of an atom bomb by the Nazis in the Ohrdruf-Three Corners region of Thuringia comes from a rather specific, and rather startling, assertion. According to Freier, the test took place on March 4, 1945 at the old troop parade ground at Orhdruf. There, a small scaffold about 6 meters high had been erected, a the top of which a small "atomic weapon"25 was placed. The weapon, according to Freier, was "100 g", a mere one hundred grams! This is one of the most significant, and highly problematical, allegations regarding the real nature of the Nazi atom bomb project, made by someone supposedly involved in it, for as will be immediately obvious, 100 grams is far short of the 50 or so kilograms of critical mass reportedly needed for a uranium-based atom bomb, as has been seen, and it is still well below the amount needed for the critical mass for a typical plutonium bomb. Yet, Freier is insistent upon this point, and moreover alleges that all the "slaves", the luckless concentration camp victims that were forced to take part in the test, within a circle of 500-600 meters from ground zero were killed.26 This would give an area of approximately 1 to 1.2 kilometers of blast damage, roughly the effect of a modern tactical nuclear bomb. Such a blast radius would

require an enormous amount of the then available conventional explosives, and that amount would far exceed the mere 100 grams Freier alleges for the device. These points indicates that the "A- Waffe" or "atomic weapon" was in fact a fully fledged atom bomb. So how does one explain the extraordinarily small critical mass, especially since the Manhattan Project was aiming for a uranium critical mass of around 50 kilograms?

This question deserve serious consideration, for it affords yet another possible clue - if the allegation is to be credited with accuracy - into the real nature of the Nazi atom bomb project. We have seen already that the project was developed under several different and discreet groups for reasons partly due to security, and for reasons partly due to the practical nature of the German

25 "A -Waffe", the wording again is not "Atombombe" but only A-waffe, or "A-weapon".

26 Meyer and Mehner, Das Geheimnis, p. 245.

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program. For security reason, I believe the "Heisenberg" group and the high-profile names associated with it were deliberately used by the Nazis as the "front" group for public, namely Allied, consumption. The SS security and intelligence apparatus would have undoubtedly concluded, correctly, that these high profile scientists would be high priority targets for Allied intelligence for kidnapping and assassination. Accordingly, it is highly unlikely that the Nazis would have concentrated any genuine atomic bomb secrets or development exclusively in the hands of this group. The very existence of the Allied Legend for so many years after the war is direct testimony to the success of this plan. The real atom bomb development occurred far from the prying eyes of Allied intelligence, under the auspices of the Reichspost and more importantly, under the direct auspices of the SS.

The second facet of the German atom bomb program we have likewise previously encountered: its emphasis on what was practically achievable during the war. Hence, while the Germans knew of the possibilities of plutonium and a plutonium-based atom bomb, and therefore knew that a functioning reactor used to produce plutonium for bombs would thereby enable Germany to develop more bombs for the same investment of fissile material, they also knew that a major technical hurdle lay across the path: the development of a successful reactor in the first place. Thus, as has been previously argued, they opted to develop a uranium-based bomb only, since uranium could be enriched to weapons grade purity without the necessity of the development of a reactor, and since they already possessed the necessary technologies to do so, if employed en masse. Like its American Manhattan Project counterpart, the SS-run program relied on massive numbers of enrichment units to separate and purify isotope.

Now let us extend this line of reasoning further. Germany was also seeking to be able to deploy such bombs as warheads on its rockets. And that meant, given their limited lift capabilities, that the weight of the warheads had somehow to be reduced by several orders of magnitude for the rockets to be able to carry them. And there is an economic factor. Knowing that their industrial capacity would be stained by the effort, even with the help of tens of

84

thousands of slave laborers from the camp-, another problem may have presented itself to the Germans, a problem illuminated for them by their own knowledge of the possibilities offered by plutonium-based bombs: How does one get more bang for the Reichsmark without the use of plutonium? Is there a way to rely on less uranium in a critical mass assembly than is conventionally thought?

And so we return to Freier's statement of a remarkably small 100 g atom bomb test at Ohrdruf on March 4, 1945. There does exist a method by which much smaller critical masses of fissile material can be used to make a bomb: boosted fission. Essentially, boosted fission simply relies on the introduction of some neutron- producing material - polonium, or heavy hydrogen: deuterium, or even tritium - to release more neutrons into the chain reaction than is actually released by the fissile critical mass assembly by itself. This raises the amount of free neutrons initiating chain reactions in the critical mass, and therefore allows two very important things:

(1)

It allows slightly lower purity of fissile material - materially not considered of sufficient purity to be weapons grade without boosted fission - to be used for an actual atom bomb; and,

(2)

it requires less actual fissilematerial for the critical mass assembly to make a bomb.

Thus, "boosted fission" would have afforded the German bomb program a practical way to increase the number of bombs available to them, and a reliable method for achieving an uncontrolled nuclear fission reaction with lower purity of enriched material.27 it is perhaps quite significant, then, that Freier's testimony concerning the Three Corners underground weapons factories also mentions the existence of an underground heavy water plant in the facilities, for heavy water, of course, contains atoms of deuterium and tritium(heavy hydrogen atoms with one and two extra neutrons in the nucleus respectively).

27 Q.v. Meyer and Mehner, Hitler, pp. 121-123.

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In any case, the test of a small critical mass, boosted fission device of high yield at Ohrdruf on March 4, 1945, is at least consistent with the parameters of the German bomb program and its practical needs. But there are interesting, and intriguingly suggestive, corroborations of the test. According to Freier, Hitler himself was indeed in the Three Corners headquarters for a brief period at the end of march 1945.28 It is known that Hitler did personally visit and address the officers of the German Ninth Army, operating in that precise area, in March of 1945., and stated to them that there were still things that needed to be "finished", an interesting comment if seen in the light of Freier's allegations that it was not the bomb that Germany needed, but the delivery systems. It does make sense that if there were such a test, that Hitler would have been present as an observer to witness the final success of German science in delivering to him the "ultimate weapon".

But perhaps the most persuasive bit of evidence that there is far more about the end of World War Two than we have been told can be found in two exceedingly odd facts that emerge from the Three Corners region of Thuringia in south central Germany. In a statement made on March 20, 1968, former German General Erich Andress was in the Three Corners region at the end of the war, when suddenly, more American military personnel(who were already occupying the area), arrived with jeeps and heavy transports, and immediately ordered all the buildings and houses in the area to have their windows totally blacked out, leaving one to conclude that the Americans were removing something from the area of great value to them, something they wished no one to see. The second odd fact is even more curious, for it is a fact that, of all the areas in modern Germany, the region of Thuringia, precisely in the area of Jonastal and Ohrdruf, is the region of Germany with the highest concentration of background gamma radiation.29

So, what is really signified by the unique exchange of remarks between former Reich Minister of Armaments Albert Speer, and Chief American Prosecutor Jackson at Nuremberg? That Jackson is privy to information similar in nature to reports only recently

declassiefied is clear from his question. That this information concerns the real nature of German atom bomb research and its -what appear to be astounding achievements completely at variance with the postwar Allied Legend - would also seem to be indicated. And that Albert Speer seems either unwilling to talk about them candidly, or is simply entirely ignorant of them, also seems indisputable. Thus Jackson's question would seem to imply a test of the extent of Speer's knowledge of the program and his complicity in the wo tests at Rugen and Ohrdruf. If the Minister if Armaments for the entire Third Reich knew nothing of it, then indeed, we are dealing with a black Reich within the black Reich, a beast in the belly of the beast, of which even high ranking Nazis such as Speer knew very little, if anything. The great secret of World War Two, one which the victorious Allies and Russians wish to keep secret to this day, was that Nazi Germany was indisputably first to reach the atom bomb, and was indisputably for a very brief period before the end of the war, the world's very first nuclear power. But why is the Allied and Russian secrecy continued even to the present day? The answer to that disturbing question will be addressed more completely in the subsequent parts of this book, for the answer, disturbing as it is,

concerns far more than mere nuclear weapons. But why didn't the Nazis use their bombs if they had them? The answer to that question has already been partly addressed in this chapter: if they used any weapons of mass destruction, nuclear or Otherwise, they would have been far more likely to have used them in a fashion consistent with their racist and genocidal ideology, as well as against the enemy that was their largest military threat: on the Eastern Front, against the Soviet Union, where a paranoid Stalinist regime would have been loathe to admit to the world or to its own war-savaged people that they faced an enemy with overwhelming technological superiority. Such an admission would likely have so demoralized the Russians, already forced to spend rivers of their own blood in every engagement with the Wehrmacht, that Stalin's regime itself may not have survived such an admission. But why not use them against the Western Allies in the last stages of the war, as the military situation grew increasingly

Tony, Carter Hydrick takes a bunch of assumptions and misconstrues them. The retired WW2 Japanese General Kawashima Touransouke who first requested shipments of Uranium from Germany on 7th July 1943 appeared on NHK TV in a 1982 interview. Kawashima stated that 2000kg of Uranium oxide, not enriched Uranium 235, reached Japan during WW2.

An intelligence report of US Navy Intelligence entitled "German Technical Aid to Japan, a Survey" dated June 15, 1945 talks emphatically about the voyage of U-234, stating that Uranium oxide was unloaded from her.

The difference in cargo manifests arises from the fact that whilst cruising the Kettegat between Denmark and Sweden in March 1945 another U-boat a type VII class boat surfaced underneath U-234 forcing her into a Norwegian port for repairs during which time some of her cargo was unloaded. U-234's radio operator Wolfgang Hirschfeld wrote in his autobiographical account that some of the cargo offloaded was so important that plans were discussed to fly the cargo direct to Japan from Norway.

Two Messerschmitt Me-262 fighters in the original manifest were not aboard her when she was offloaded in USA, thus one assumes these were offloaded in Norway.

Far more fascinating than Hydrick's assertion is the claim at page 198 of the report; "German Technical Aid to Japan, a Survey" dated June 15, 1945, was it's claim that in 1944 Germany provided japan with the technology to build minature atom bombs with a blast radius of 1,000 metres and elsewhere in the same report that Japan began building V-2 rockets at Mukden (Shenyang) Manchuria in January 1945.

Readings at site of Gusen camp near St
Georgen show elevated levels of uranium -
indications of subterranean implosions
seven decades ago
15 miles of tunnels lie under Gusen, a
sub-camp of Mauthausen where tens of
thousands of people were murdered
Hunt to find evidence of atomic research
after documentary by Andreas Sulzer
unnerved locals
Austrian authorities have ordered a search of
secret tunnels beneath a former concentration
camp complex where Nazi scientists are believed
to have conducted nuclear research in a bid to
build an atomic bomb.
The probe was triggered by a TV documentary
which accessed wartime archives containing
blueprints and eyewitness accounts of frantic
attempts to beat the Americans in the race for
the weapon to win the war.
And recently, readings were taken of the area at
St Georgen showing elevated levels of uranium -
indications of subterranean implosions seven
decades ago._________________--
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

There were in fact several underground factories producing nuclear weapons and/or V-2 rockets to deliver them.

For example at Ottamuchow south of Breslau was a factory adapting warheads to the V-2 which an OSS report dated 9 November 1944 noted had a destructing radius of several kilometres.

On 4th April 1944 a British officer named Saunders attached the British 8th Army stumbled across an underground factory at Eselkemp 74km west of Hannover. Inside he discovered a working nuclear reactor, 40 cyclotrons and an unused Atomic bomb weighing 3.8 tons named "76-Zentner" A more detailed report of this discovery has been published in STERN magazine and in La Republica in 2011. The story came to light through Keith Saunders mentioning his father's wartime experiences to a German researcher named Dirk Finkemeier.

At the Richard mine in Czechoslovakia the Red Army discovered banks of working cyclotrons and V-2 rockets being assembled for atomic warheads at the Weser Plant. Their warheads required the addition of a radioactive additive which fits the description of tritium. Tritium is often used these days to boost the yield of explosive nuclear devices.

Some interesting comments on this topic appeared on the YouTube Horizon 'Hitler's Nuke' documentary - reposted film below

Simon Gunson wrote:

A document archived at Maxwell AFB in Alabama documents recovery by the US 9th Army of a German 3.8 ton Atomic bomb ["76-Zentner"] from an underground complex near Goslar on 26 April 1845. Charles Linbergh who was both a member of the US Naval Technical Mission Europe and a qualified B-24 Liberator pilot personally flew the device back to USA from Germany. Prior to this the Manhattan Project had no LITTLE BOY bomb. USA had two Plutonium bomb projects, FAT MAN and THIN MAN.﻿

Simon Gunson

During 1944 Germany had 40 Anschutz Mark IIIB centrifuges at an underground complex in Espelkamp, plus 20 Hellage Mark IIIB centrifuges at Kandern plus others at a complex in Celle each able to enrich 250 grams of Uranium by 7% per 24 hours, producing at least 10.5kg of 80% HEU every 12 days. Even Oak Ridge could not produce HEU at such a rate. Manhattan Project only produced 15kg HEU in total by late March 1945.

There were in fact several underground factories producing nuclear weapons and/or V-2 rockets to deliver them.

For example at Ottamuchow south of Breslau was a factory adapting warheads to the V-2 which an OSS report dated 9 November 1944 noted had a destructing radius of several kilometres.

On 4th April 1944 a British officer named Saunders attached the British 8th Army stumbled across an underground factory at Eselkemp 74km west of Hannover. Inside he discovered a working nuclear reactor, 40 cyclotrons and an unused Atomic bomb weighing 3.8 tons named "76-Zentner" A more detailed report of this discovery has been published in STERN magazine and in La Republica in 2011. The story came to light through Keith Saunders mentioning his father's wartime experiences to a German researcher named Dirk Finkemeier.

At the Richard mine in Czechoslovakia the Red Army discovered banks of working cyclotrons and V-2 rockets being assembled for atomic warheads at the Weser Plant. Their warheads required the addition of a radioactive additive which fits the description of tritium. Tritium is often used these days to boost the yield of explosive nuclear devices.

These and similar facts remain concealed and classified.

Correction & Apology

I have to apologise for errors in the above post due to translation errors in an email I received from German Lawyer Dirk Finkemeier who alerted me to this story.

The 40 cyclotrons were at another location code-name "Wesser-B" which i now understand to be the Richard Mine in the Czech republic. During WW2 the Germans built Panther tanks in part of the Richard Mine however another portion of it was deliberately destroyed with explosives to cave in the ceilings.

At Espelkamp which I originally referred to Dirk has since clarified for me that there were 40 Anschutz Mark III centrifuges there. Dirk advises me from his further research that in March 1946 Konrad Beyerle the chief engineer for Anschutz was interviewed about the machines found at Espelkamp. He revealed that each machine could enrich 250g of Uranium by 7% per 24 hours. This means 250 grams could be enriched to 80% HEU in just 12 days.

There were other Hellage Mark III centrifuges installed at Kandern and Celle during 1944. These were the same Anschutz design, Hellage merely refers to the Hellage linen factory at Freiberg.

Dirk Finkemeier also put me in touch with Keith Sanders clearing up other misunderstandings. Keith is a former British Army officer but it was his father in WW2 Corporal Fred Gwyndyr Sanders RAOC who entered the Espekamp underground factory hidden beneath a turpentine manufacturing plant.

Shortly before his death Keith's father told him of the Espelkamp facility. Sanders senior said that he found 40 Anschutz centrifuges there plus a Krupp nuclear reactor.

Keith Sanders also contradicted Dirk and told me the 76 Zentner bomb was found near Goslar on the 26th April by the US 9th Army. Dirk advised me that Lindbergh personally flew the German bomb back to the United States.

I apologise that I posted in haste and fell victim to miscommunication.

I have had a great deal of further communication on the issue since with Dirk Finkemeier and i continue to learn new facts on the issue.

Currently a junior school above the old underground nuclear factory has been closed due to children falling sick from what appears to be radiation sickness.

Researcher/Author Joseph P Farrell offers quite a different conversation that happened between the captured German physicists at the Farmhall manor in Britain. Farrell also claims that the IG Farben synthetic rubber plant by Auschwitz was not a rubber plant at all, but a nuclear facility.

By Stephanie Linning for MailOnline
12:20 28 Dec 2014, updated 17:18 28 Dec 2014
Facility was discovered near the town of St Georgen an der Gusen, Austria
Understood that it could be connected to another Nazi weapons facility
Experts believe that it was used to conduct research into atomic bombs
Supported by heightened radiation readings and witness testimonies
A labyrinth of secret underground tunnels believed to have been used by the Nazis to develop a nuclear bomb has been uncovered.

The facility, which covers an area of up to 75 acres, was discovered near the town of St Georgen an der Gusen, Austria last week, it has been reported.

Excavations began on the site after researchers detected heightened levels of radiation in the area - supporting claims that the Nazis were developing nuclear weapons.

Scroll down for video

Vast: The facility, which covers an area of up to 75 acres, was discovered near the town of St Georgen an der Gusen, Austria last week. It is believed to be connected to Nazi weapons facility B8 Bergkristall (above) +8
Vast: The facility, which covers an area of up to 75 acres, was discovered near the town of St Georgen an der Gusen, Austria last week. It is believed to be connected to Nazi weapons facility B8 Bergkristall (above)
Research: Excavations began on the site after heightened levels of radiation were detected in the area - supporting long-standing claims that the Nazis were developing nuclear weapons. Above, B8 Bergkristall +8
Research: Excavations began on the site after heightened levels of radiation were detected in the area - supporting long-standing claims that the Nazis were developing nuclear weapons. Above, B8 Bergkristall
Significant: Documentary maker Andreas Sulzer, who is leading the excavations, said that the site is 'most likely the biggest secret weapons production facility of the Third Reich. Above, B8 Bergkristall +8
Significant: Documentary maker Andreas Sulzer, who is leading the excavations, said that the site is 'most likely the biggest secret weapons production facility of the Third Reich. Above, B8 Bergkristall
Documentary maker Andreas Sulzer, who is leading the excavations, told the Sunday Times that the site is 'most likely the biggest secret weapons production facility of the Third Reich'.

It is believed to be connected to the B8 Bergkristall underground factory, where the Messerschmitt Me 262 - the first operational jet fighter - was built.

There are also suggestions that the complex is connected to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp.

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Slave labour from the camp was used to build both complexes - with as many as 320,000 inmates in the harsh underground conditions.

But while the Bergkristall site was explored by Allied and Russia after the war, the Nazis appeared to have gone through greater lengths to conceal the newly-discovered tunnels.

Its entrance was only uncovered after the excavation team, which includes historians and scientists, pieced together information in declassified intelligence documents and testimonies from witnesses.

Hidden: While the nearby Bergkristall site was explored by Allied and Russian forces after the war, the Nazis appeared to have gone through greater lengths to conceal the newly-discovered tunnels near St Georgen +8
Hidden: While the nearby Bergkristall site was explored by Allied and Russian forces after the war, the Nazis appeared to have gone through greater lengths to conceal the newly-discovered tunnels near St Georgen
Military centre: The newly-discovered site is believed to be connected to the B8 Bergkristall underground factory, pictured above, where the Messerschmitt Me 262 - the first operational jet fighter - was built +8
Military centre: The newly-discovered site is believed to be connected to the B8 Bergkristall underground factory, pictured above, where the Messerschmitt Me 262 - the first operational jet fighter - was built
Development: While the Bergkristall site, pictured above, was explored by Allied and Russia after the war, the Nazis appeared to have gone through greater lengths to conceal the newly-discovered tunnels +8
Development: While the Bergkristall site, pictured above, was explored by Allied and Russia after the war, the Nazis appeared to have gone through greater lengths to conceal the newly-discovered tunnels
The team is now in the process of removing layers of soil and concrete packed into the tunnels and heavy granite plates that were used to cover the entrance.

Helmets belonging to SS troops and other Nazi relics are among the items that have been uncovered so far.

The excavation was halted last week by police, who demanded the group produce a permit for conducting research on historic sites. But Mr Sulzer is confident that work will resume next month.

He told the Sunday Times: 'Prisoners from concentration camps across Europe were handpicked for their special skills - physicists, chemists or other experts - to work on this monstrous project and we owe it to the victims to finally open the site and reveal the truth.'

Prisoners from concentration camps across Europe were handpicked for their special skills to work on this monstrous project and we owe it to the victims to finally open the site and reveal the truth
Excavation leader Andreas Sulzer

The probe was triggered by a research documentary by Mr Sulzer on Hitler's quest to build an atomic bomb.

In it, he referenced diary entries from a physicist called up to work for the Nazis. There is other evidence of scientists working for a secret project managed by SS General Hans Kammler.

Kammler, who signed off the plans for the gas chambers and crematorium at Auschwitz, was in charge of Hitler's missile programmes.

Mr Sulzer searched archives in Germany, Moscow and America for evidence of the nuclear weapons-building project led by the SS.

He discovered that on January 2, 1944, some 272 inmates of Mauthausen were taken from the camp to St Georgen to begin the construction of secret galleries.

By November that year, 20,000 out of 40,000 slave labourers drafted in to build the tunnels had been worked to death.

After the war, Austria spent some £10million in pouring concrete into most of the tunnels.

But Sulzer and his backers believe they missed a secret section where the atomic research was conducted.

Brutal: Slave labour from Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp (pictured) was used to build both the St Georgen site and Bergkristall with as many as 320,000 inmates in the harsh underground conditions +8
Brutal: Slave labour from Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp (pictured) was used to build both the St Georgen site and Bergkristall with as many as 320,000 inmates in the harsh underground conditions
The Soviets were stationed in St Georgen until 1955 and they took all of the files on the site back with them to Moscow.

Experts are trying to discover if there is a link between St Georgen and sites in Germany proper where scientists were assembled during the Third Reich in a bid to match American efforts to build the ultimate weapon.

In June 2011, atomic waste from Hitler's secret nuclear programme was believed to have been found in an old mine near Hanover.

More than 126,000 barrels of nuclear material lie rotting over 2,000 feet below ground in an old salt mine.

Rumour has it that the remains of nuclear scientists who worked on the Nazi programme are also there, their irradiated bodies burned in secret by S.S. men sworn to secrecy._________________--
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

The Nazis had the bomb.
Not as a fully functional weapon but as a miniaturized trigger for a much larger device, the difference being the that trigger was an isomer of Plutonium Pu240 or similar and thus relatively metastable in it's heightened energy state to the extent that a single zap from an explosive or neutron generator source could cause it to cascade with a huge gamma burst. This gamma burst was subsequently to be used to generate ENORMOUS thermal boundary pressures on Lithium Deuteride which a rather famous man in the Non-Uraneinverein 'club' had been working on, Manfred Von Ardenne.
This man may also have been involved with the transmutation of Plutonium (his Ardenee Source remained one of the purest generators of high capacitance voltage until the early digital systems of the 1970s) as it is stated that 'Die Glocke' or the Nazi Bell was in fact a massively large plasma discharge capacitor (Tokomak) and it was this which was used to generate the 500-800 millgrams of isomer material known variously as Xerum 525 or (later) 'Red Mercury'.
The element of significance here is that while gamma photons heat and pressure are enormous, they do not, in and of themselves cause fission of more normal U235. However; by causing simple fusion in the LD6 they cause the Deuterium (heavy hydrogen) to release a significant quantity of thermal neutrons and these do cause fission.
Essentially then, if you can fool a relatively small (2-10kg) secondary wad of Uranium to into thinking a massive primary detonation has just occurred, the thermal neutrons from that initial gamma+hydrogen flash can cause the secondary to initiate it's own fissile reaction (much more powerful) with what is nominally a subcritical mass of Uranium or Plutonium.
Why is this important? Germany had insight to the Manhattan District Project from at least late '42 or early '43. At which point Hitler reversed his decision on the development of the atomic bomb and large numbers of particle separators (cyclotrons) with a capture tank began to be used to separate out Uranium 235 from the less useful U238. There were at least 5 such facilities in the Greater Reich (including Austria and possibly Czechoslovakia), which had little use other than for atomic research and yet the Allied Myth acknowledges only that which was active in the Curie labs in France.
While these machines were very powerful, far more so than the Beta Calutron equivalents we used, they could still only harvest tiny amounts of U-235, on the order of single micrograms per pass. Which is to say, particles of dust.
Hence they could not, by themselves, create the large quantities (20-50kg) of weaponized radio material necessary for a bomb. What they could do was be transmuted to Plutonium in a Tokomak, reducing the required total amount, even as they were 'charged up' from ground to metastable states (an isomer is an isotope which doesn't decay) for use as 1-2KT triggers on the larger 15-20KT bombs.
Hitler had no use for a few kiloton class bombs. He felt he needed to make sweeping political statements inherent to the eradication of whole cities not city blocks (which a V-2 could destroy with conventional explosives). Similar to 'the message' which we sent with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki weapons.
Yet thanks to the deliberate sabotage of Von Heisenberg in failing to emphasize the development of more conventional U-235 (centrifuge, sluice or gaseous diffusion) or Pu-239 (breeder reactor, including a 'hot pit' thorium reactor with molten reaction mass) as weapon fuel sourcing for the secondary, the larger bombs simply were not ready. It would in fact not be ready until November 1944, after the SS took over the program.
This is important. Because, by July 1944, the Allies were sufficiently into the Cotentin peninsula that it was unlikely they would be kicked out and thus Germany had no hope of winning the war by anything but the most extreme of unconventional means (in this, it must be remembered that the Allies had stockpiles of gas and biologics which would have decimated Germany's civilian population so battlefield nukes could be countered, with strategic depopulation, if need be).
Yet from July 20th onwards, when the basic concept met it's first criticality experiment in a deep mine in the Austrian Alps, the Germans had nukes and the OKW knew that once Hitler had them, or thought he had a path to them, they would never be able to end the war. And so they struck. Looking to secure the means to a victory if possible and a polite end of the campaign if not.
Operation Valkyrie was the result. And the failure of Von Stauffenberg to finish Hitler sunk the entire operation as or when the central conspirators failed to kill themselves and their group was collectively wiped out through expanding-ring interrogation efforts of people who knew all the cell leader identities.
IMO, far from being an artifact of Bormann's Flight Capital program (most of whose securities were 'soft' in the form of patents and franchising contracts rather than being hard commodities like gold or silver) it is likely that The Schwarz Ritter incident, being as it involved a submarine which was part of the active military fleet, albeit one which was deployed in Spain for the Aktion Feurland effort, was also a function of a military attempt to end the war and cover their asses not assets.
Why? Because the military would know, better than any, how badly they were losing. Because the civilian industrial agencies were, even then, transnationals as Ford, Continental Tire, SKF Ball Bearings and even Standard of Ohio (running Mexican Oil to Germany) were all in it, up to their ears, with efforts to preserve German industry to the point of 'forbidding' attacks on certain targets like neutral shipping going to Sweden (and thence to Germany) or the Schweinfurt/Regensberg attacks.
Industry would survive the war because industry was dependent on their part in the enemy war effort never being known and this would be simple enough secret to betray, just on the premise of U.S. plant workers being told that the company was supplying the Nazis (see: Trading With The Enemy, it actually happened and the factory workers threatened to tear the building and the management to pieces when they discovered Philadelphia ball bearings being shipped to 'South America' rather than the war effort...).
No, so long as BIS and the various linkages between the Rockefeller and Banco De Algemaine were maintained, Industry had little to fear. The people who were in a position to lose it all were those in the German military and aristocratic classes who were going to be charged with war crimes based on what the political class had ordered done, if they didn't avert catastrophe.
The easiest way to achieve this was through military connections in Washington and the military all operated under the penant of State when it came to diplomacy. When the U.S. heard of the failure of Valkyrie, it is likely that they realized that the Germans had nothing to offer and thus sank the boat as the simplest means of cutting all ties.
Hitler would go on to get his nukes, sometime in October or November, with initial test blasts on the Bug Peninsula (a fizzle which nonetheless caused a massive EMP event that put out telephone and telegraph around the Baltic) followed by another detonation in the Ohrdruf area.
Why didn't he use them?
All indications are that he wanted to and even tried to, but that his own vaunted SS formations bought their hides by sending rail wagons and even aircraft to the wrong locations where they sat on the weapons until U.S. forces could arrive to relieve them in place. This being a part of the reason for the mad rush into Pilsen (150km beyond the agreed force demarcation lines of the Elbe) by Patton as well as the American push into Austria where, again, massive SS formations guarded the frontier forward into Hungary against the advance of Koniev's southern pincer. And the majority of the nuclear research was actually undertaken.
Since we did not know, for sure, that SS General Hans Kammler hadn't gotten a few weapons north to Berlin, 'the honor and the glory' of tackling it was left firmly to the Russians who managed to lose somewhere around a quarter million troops for the privilege of knocking down a flag.
We wanted the production process means, the radio fuel and some say, the weapons themselves. And we got them. As any inspection of the Uranium Processing files at Oak Ridge will show: we simply couldn't have gotten the material for both the 132lb Little Boy and the 40lb Fat Man cores any other way. We weren't making enough to material for both a Uranium bomb of that size and as feeder stock for the Hanford plutonium breeder reactor.
If that secret is onboard the Schwarz Ritter, you can bet that it was paid a little visit by divers from a more modern sub because it essentially proves that the Nazis had the bomb and refused to use it on humanity, even within their own borders to save their freedom. While the U.S., having absolutely no need to bomb a Japan on the edge of starvation and within weeks of ending the war WITHOUT INVASION BEING NECESSARY was in fact attacked, twice, in a blatant violation of the Hague Laws Of Land Warfare on striking civilian targets at all and dual use targets without at least 24hrs of warning. Some 300,000 civilians dead, for nothing, and we didn't even know how far the Germans got until the end, when we fabricated this massive lie to cover up the obvious.
Groves And Now The Truth Can Be Told says there was no plutonium bomb effort. There wasn't. There was an isomer effort using third generation (lighweight, small enough to fit in a 'Werewolf' backpack) technology base engineering when our 'best and brightest' Jewish refugees could barely get a Gen-1, 10,000lb, weapon to go off at all.
It would be hilarious if it wasn't so damn tragic. The wrong people won WWII for the wrong reasons and Americans have been suffering for it, ever since.﻿

The technical director for Anschutz & Co Dr Konrad Beyerle was taken Aswelde near Espelkamp in March 1946 and interrogated about the centrifuges found there. A number of German scientists who had been at Farm Hall were imprisoned at Aswelde to keep the Nazi nuclear facility at Espelkamp in operation producing HEU until 1948. This operation is still relatively unknown.

David Rudnick
Heisenberg sabotaged the program towards the latter stages of the war... the Nazis beat the Allies in introducing most of the war's most cutting edge weaponry. Heisenberg is one of the 20th century's greatest scientists on so many levels.

Simon Gunson
A document archived at Maxwell AFB in Alabama documents recovery by the US 9th Army of a German 3.8 ton Atomic bomb ["76-Zentner"] from an underground complex near Goslar on 26 April 1845. Charles Linbergh who was both a member of the US Naval Technical Mission Europe and a qualified B-24 Liberator pilot personally flew the device back to USA from Germany. Prior to this the Manhattan Project had no LITTLE BOY bomb. USA had two Plutonium bomb projects, FAT MAN and THIN MAN.

Simon Gunson
During 1944 Germany had 40 Anschutz Mark IIIB centrifuges at an underground complex in Espelkamp, plus 20 Hellage Mark IIIB centrifuges at Kandern plus others at a complex in Celle each able to enrich 250 grams of Uranium by 7% per 24 hours, producing at least 10.5kg of 80% HEU every 12 days. Even Oak Ridge could not produce HEU at such a rate. Manhattan Project only produced 15kg HEU in total by late March 1945.

AltitudeWarrior
+joe3072000
The technical director for Anschutz & Co Dr Konrad Beyerle was taken Aswelde near Espelkamp in March 1946 and interrogated about the centrifuges found there. A number of German scientists who had been at Farm Hall were imprisoned at Aswelde to keep the Nazi nuclear facility at Espelkamp in operation producing HEU until 1948. This operation is still relatively unknown.

Simon Gunson
Apologies yes, typo... Alswede 52°20'12.27"N, 8°33'44.43"E near Espelkamp. After their internment at Farm Hall the Nazi nuclear scientists plus other engineers and scientists involved in the Nazi Atomic project were held at Alswede and the British kept using Nazi centrifuges there until 1948 for the British nuclear program.

Helga Schmidlap
Your wrong and the Little Boy Uranium Bomb used 240 Pounds of enriched uranium. However the Fatman Bomb was the real killer and only used six and quarter ounces of Plutonium. Werner Heisenberg said they would need over a thousand of kilos for the German Bomb. The US with it's Plutonium Bomb was so far ahead of Germany because Plutonium was a by product of the Uranium Reactor. Please don't try to impress people with Germany Technology. By the way it a Jewish Professor known as Elise Mitner who figured the process and Otto Hann was Nazi-Chemist and Nazi agent who stole the process from Elise Mitner. I like how the British lie in the News Cast where they say American and British scientists built the bomb. The British are such greedy social climbers and the US did not give them any technology until the 1950's

TonyGosling wrote:

Some interesting comments on this topic appeared on the YouTube Horizon 'Hitler's Nuke' documentary - reposted film below

Simon Gunson wrote:

A document archived at Maxwell AFB in Alabama documents recovery by the US 9th Army of a German 3.8 ton Atomic bomb ["76-Zentner"] from an underground complex near Goslar on 26 April 1845. Charles Linbergh who was both a member of the US Naval Technical Mission Europe and a qualified B-24 Liberator pilot personally flew the device back to USA from Germany. Prior to this the Manhattan Project had no LITTLE BOY bomb. USA had two Plutonium bomb projects, FAT MAN and THIN MAN.﻿

Simon Gunson

During 1944 Germany had 40 Anschutz Mark IIIB centrifuges at an underground complex in Espelkamp, plus 20 Hellage Mark IIIB centrifuges at Kandern plus others at a complex in Celle each able to enrich 250 grams of Uranium by 7% per 24 hours, producing at least 10.5kg of 80% HEU every 12 days. Even Oak Ridge could not produce HEU at such a rate. Manhattan Project only produced 15kg HEU in total by late March 1945.

Post WW2 World Order: US Planned to Wipe USSR Out by Massive Nuclear Strike

Was the US deterrence military doctrine aimed against the Soviet Union during the Cold War era really "defensive" and who actually started the nuclear arms race paranoia?

Just weeks after the Second World War was over and Nazi Germany defeated Soviet Russia's allies, the United States and Great Britain hastened to develop military plans aimed at dismantling the USSR and wiping out its cities with a massive nuclear strike.

Interestingly enough, then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had ordered the British Armed Forces' Joint Planning Staff to develop a strategy targeting the USSR months before the end of the Second World War. The first edition of the plan was prepared on May 22, 1945. In accordance with the plan the invasion of Russia-held Europe by the Allied forces was scheduled on July 1, 1945.

British generals warned Churchill that the "total war" would be hazardous to the Allied armed forces.

However, after the United States "tested" its nuclear arsenal in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, Churchill and right-wing American policy makers started to persuade the White House to bomb the USSR. A nuclear strike against Soviet Russia, exhausted by the war with Germany, would have led to the defeat of the Kremlin at the same time allowing the Allied Forces to avoid US and British military casualties, Churchill insisted. Needless to say, the former British Prime Minister did not care about the death of tens of thousands of Russian peaceful civilians which were already hit severely by the four-year war nightmare.

"He [Churchill] pointed out that if an atomic bomb could be dropped on the Kremlin, wiping it out, it would be a very easy problem to handle the balance of Russia, which would be without direction," an unclassified note from the FBI archive read.

Unthinkable as it may seem, Churchill's plan literally won the hearts and minds of US policy makers and military officials. Between 1945 and the USSR's first detonation of a nuclear device in 1949, the Pentagon developed at least nine nuclear war plans targeting Soviet Russia, according to US researchers Dr. Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod. In their book "To Win a Nuclear War: the Pentagon's Secret War Plans," based on declassified top secret documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the researchers exposed the US military's strategies to initiate a nuclear war with Russia.

"The names given to these plans graphically portray their offensive purpose: Bushwhacker, Broiler, Sizzle, Shakedown, Offtackle, Dropshot, Trojan, Pincher, and Frolic. The US military knew the offensive nature of the job President Truman had ordered them to prepare for and had named their war plans accordingly," remarked American scholar J.W. Smith ("The World's Wasted Wealth 2").

These "first-strike" plans developed by the Pentagon were aimed at destroying the USSR without any damage to the United States.

The 1949 Dropshot plan envisaged that the US would attack Soviet Russia and drop at least 300 nuclear bombs and 20,000 tons of conventional bombs on 200 targets in 100 urban areas, including Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg). In addition, the planners offered to kick off a major land campaign against the USSR to win a "complete victory" over the Soviet Union together with the European allies. According to the plan Washington would start the war on January 1, 1957.

A photo dated September 1945 of the remains of the Prefectural Industry Promotion Building after the bombing of Hiroshima, which was later preserved as a monument. (File)
Nuclear Bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki Was Unjustified – US Experts
For a long period of time the only obstacle in the way of the US' massive nuclear offensive was that the Pentagon did not possess enough atomic bombs (by 1948 Washington boasted an arsenal of 50 atomic bombs) as well as planes to carry them in. For instance, in 1948 the US Air Force had only thirty-two B-29 bombers modified to deliver nuclear bombs.
In September 1948 US president Truman approved a National Security Council paper (NSC 30) on "Policy on Atomic Warfare," which stated that the United States must be ready to "utilize promptly and effectively all appropriate means available, including atomic weapons, in the interest of national security and must therefore plan accordingly."

At this time, the US generals desperately needed information about the location of Soviet military and industrial sites. So far, the US launched thousands of photographing overflights to the Soviet territory triggering concerns about potential a Western invasion of the USSR among the Kremlin officials. While the Soviets hastened to beef up their defensive capabilities, the military and political decision makers of the West used their rival's military buildup as justification for building more weapons.

Meanwhile, in order to back its offensive plans Washington dispatched its B-29 bombers to Europe during the first Berlin crisis in 1948. In 1949 the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed, six years before the USSR and its Eastern European allies responded defensively by establishing the Warsaw Pact — the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance.

Just before the USSR tested its first atomic bomb, the US' nuclear arsenal had reached 250 bombs and the Pentagon came to the conclusion that a victory over the Soviet Union was now "possible." Alas, the detonation of the first nuclear bomb by the Soviet Union dealt a heavy blow to US militarists' plans.

"The Soviet atomic bomb test on August 29, 1949 shook Americans who had believed that their atomic monopoly would last much longer, but did not immediately alter the pattern of war planning. The key issue remained just what level of damage would force a Soviet surrender," Professor Donald Angus MacKenzie of the University of Edinburgh remarked in his essay "Nuclear War Planning and Strategies of Nuclear Coercion."

Although Washington's war planners knew that it would take years before the Soviet Union would obtain a significant atomic arsenal, the point was that the Soviet bomb could not been ignored.

Eventually, in 1960 the US' nuclear war plans were formalized in the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP).

At first, the SIOP envisaged a massive simultaneous nuclear strike against the USSR's nuclear forces, military targets, cities, as well as against China and Eastern Europe. It was planned that the US' strategic forces would use almost 3,500 atomic warheads to bomb their targets. According to US generals' estimates, the attack could have resulted in the death of about 285 to 425 million people. Some of the USSR's European allies were meant to be completely "wiped out."

"We're just going to have to wipe it [Albania] out," US General Thomas Power remarked at the 1960 SIOP planning conference, as quoted by MacKenzie.

However, the Kennedy administration introduced significant changes to the plan, insisting that the US military should avoid targeting Soviet cities and had to focus on the rival's nuclear forces alone. In 1962 the SIOP was modified but still it was acknowledged that the nuclear strike could lead to the death of millions of peaceful civilians.

20:12 15.08.2015(updated 13:29 22.08.2015) Ekaterina Blinova
Was the US deterrence military doctrine aimed against the Soviet Union during the Cold War era really "defensive" and who actually started the nuclear arms race paranoia?

Just weeks after the Second World War was over and Nazi Germany defeated Soviet Russia's allies, the United States and Great Britain hastened to develop military plans aimed at dismantling the USSR and wiping out its cities with a massive nuclear strike.

Interestingly enough, then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had ordered the British Armed Forces' Joint Planning Staff to develop a strategy targeting the USSR months before the end of the Second World War. The first edition of the plan was prepared on May 22, 1945. In accordance with the plan the invasion of Russia-held Europe by the Allied forces was scheduled on July 1, 1945.

British generals warned Churchill that the "total war" would be hazardous to the Allied armed forces.

However, after the United States "tested" its nuclear arsenal in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, Churchill and right-wing American policy makers started to persuade the White House to bomb the USSR. A nuclear strike against Soviet Russia, exhausted by the war with Germany, would have led to the defeat of the Kremlin at the same time allowing the Allied Forces to avoid US and British military casualties, Churchill insisted. Needless to say, the former British Prime Minister did not care about the death of tens of thousands of Russian peaceful civilians which were already hit severely by the four-year war nightmare.

"He [Churchill] pointed out that if an atomic bomb could be dropped on the Kremlin, wiping it out, it would be a very easy problem to handle the balance of Russia, which would be without direction," an unclassified note from the FBI archive read.

Unthinkable as it may seem, Churchill's plan literally won the hearts and minds of US policy makers and military officials. Between 1945 and the USSR's first detonation of a nuclear device in 1949, the Pentagon developed at least nine nuclear war plans targeting Soviet Russia, according to US researchers Dr. Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod. In their book "To Win a Nuclear War: the Pentagon's Secret War Plans," based on declassified top secret documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the researchers exposed the US military's strategies to initiate a nuclear war with Russia.

"The names given to these plans graphically portray their offensive purpose: Bushwhacker, Broiler, Sizzle, Shakedown, Offtackle, Dropshot, Trojan, Pincher, and Frolic. The US military knew the offensive nature of the job President Truman had ordered them to prepare for and had named their war plans accordingly," remarked American scholar J.W. Smith ("The World's Wasted Wealth 2").

These "first-strike" plans developed by the Pentagon were aimed at destroying the USSR without any damage to the United States.

The 1949 Dropshot plan envisaged that the US would attack Soviet Russia and drop at least 300 nuclear bombs and 20,000 tons of conventional bombs on 200 targets in 100 urban areas, including Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg). In addition, the planners offered to kick off a major land campaign against the USSR to win a "complete victory" over the Soviet Union together with the European allies. According to the plan Washington would start the war on January 1, 1957.

A photo dated September 1945 of the remains of the Prefectural Industry Promotion Building after the bombing of Hiroshima, which was later preserved as a monument. (File)
Nuclear Bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki Was Unjustified – US Experts
For a long period of time the only obstacle in the way of the US' massive nuclear offensive was that the Pentagon did not possess enough atomic bombs (by 1948 Washington boasted an arsenal of 50 atomic bombs) as well as planes to carry them in. For instance, in 1948 the US Air Force had only thirty-two B-29 bombers modified to deliver nuclear bombs.
In September 1948 US president Truman approved a National Security Council paper (NSC 30) on "Policy on Atomic Warfare," which stated that the United States must be ready to "utilize promptly and effectively all appropriate means available, including atomic weapons, in the interest of national security and must therefore plan accordingly."

At this time, the US generals desperately needed information about the location of Soviet military and industrial sites. So far, the US launched thousands of photographing overflights to the Soviet territory triggering concerns about a potential Western invasion of the USSR among the Kremlin officials. While the Soviets hastened to beef up their defensive capabilities, the military and political decision makers of the West used their rival's military buildup as justification for building more weapons.

Meanwhile, in order to back its offensive plans Washington dispatched its B-29 bombers to Europe during the first Berlin crisis in 1948. In 1949 the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed, six years before the USSR and its Eastern European allies responded defensively by establishing the Warsaw Pact — the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance.

Just before the USSR tested its first atomic bomb, the US' nuclear arsenal had reached 250 bombs and the Pentagon came to the conclusion that a victory over the Soviet Union was now "possible." Alas, the detonation of the first nuclear bomb by the Soviet Union dealt a heavy blow to US militarists' plans.

"The Soviet atomic bomb test on August 29, 1949 shook Americans who had believed that their atomic monopoly would last much longer, but did not immediately alter the pattern of war planning. The key issue remained just what level of damage would force a Soviet surrender," Professor Donald Angus MacKenzie of the University of Edinburgh remarked in his essay "Nuclear War Planning and Strategies of Nuclear Coercion."

Although Washington's war planners knew that it would take years before the Soviet Union would obtain a significant atomic arsenal, the point was that the Soviet bomb could not be ignored.

Eventually, in 1960 the US' nuclear war plans were formalized in the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP).

At first, the SIOP envisaged a massive simultaneous nuclear strike against the USSR's nuclear forces, military targets, cities, as well as against China and Eastern Europe. It was planned that the US' strategic forces would use almost 3,500 atomic warheads to bomb their targets. According to US generals' estimates, the attack could have resulted in the death of about 285 to 425 million people. Some of the USSR's European allies were meant to be completely "wiped out."

"We're just going to have to wipe it [Albania] out," US General Thomas Power remarked at the 1960 SIOP planning conference, as quoted by MacKenzie.

However, the Kennedy administration introduced significant changes to the plan, insisting that the US military should avoid targeting Soviet cities and had to focus on the rival's nuclear forces alone. In 1962 the SIOP was modified but still it was acknowledged that the nuclear strike could lead to the death of millions of peaceful civilians.

I had the privilege of discovering this work in the 1990s, in its first incarnation on the internet, and then later I found an earlier edition of this book in a Barnes and Noble, and after encouraging the author to seek out Trine Day and republish this work, I am enthused that he has done so and that Trine Day has added this signally important work to its offerings.

In the documents, test pilot Hans Zinsser describes seeing a mushroom cloud in the sky during a test flight near Ludwigslust in 1944
BYALLAN HALL 23 FEB 2017

Documents unearthed in an American archive suggest that Nazi Germany may have tested an operational nuclear bomb before the end of World War Two .
Recently declassifed file APO 696 from the National Archives in Washington is a detailed survey of how far Third Reich scientists got in the development of an atomic bomb - something leader Adolf Hitler craved.
In the file, obtained by the popular daily newspaper Bild, the task of the academics who prepared the paper between 1944 and 1947 was the “investigations, research, developments and practical use of the German atomic bomb.”
The report was prepared by countless American and British intelligence officers and also includes the testimony of four German experts - two chemical physicists, a chemist and a missile expert.
It concurs that Hitler’s boffins failed in the quest to achieve a breakthrough in nuclear technology - BUT that a documented test may have taken place of a rudimentary warhead in 1944.
The statement of the German test pilot Hans Zinsser in the file is considered evidence. The missile expert says he observed in 1944 a mushroom cloud in the sky during a test flight near Ludwigslust.
His log submitted to the Allied investigators reads: “In early October 1944 I flew away 12-15km from a nuclear test station near Ludwigslust (South of Lübeck).
“A cloud shaped like a mushroom with turbulent, billowing sections (at about 7,000m) stood, without any seeming connections over the spot where the explosion took place.
Strong electrical disturbances and the impossibility to continue radio communication as by lighting turned up.'
He estimated that the cloud stretched for 9km and described further “strange colourings” followed by a blast wave which translated into a “strong pull on the stick” - meaning his cockpit controls.
An hour later a pilot in a different machine took off from Ludwigslust and observed the same phenomenon.
According to other archival documents, the Italian correspondent Luigi Romersa observed on the ground the same explosion.
He had been sent by dictator Benito Mussolini to watch the test of a “new weapon” of the Germans. He was ordered to report his impressions back to Mussolini.
It is known that Hitler pursued the goal of nuclear technology and wanted his V-2 rockets to be able to carry them to destroy the UK.
The testimony of the four German scientists in the declassified American report mentions a top secret meeting held in Berlin in 1943 at which armaments minister and Hitler favourite Albert Speer was present for the discussion called a “nuclear summit.”
In the end the report states that the Allies believe the Germans fell short of triggering the nuclear chain reaction necessary to trigger a nuclear blast - but none could come up with an explanation for what occurred in the skies over Ludwigslust in 1944._________________www.rethink911.orgwww.patriotsquestion911.comwww.actorsandartistsfor911truth.orgwww.mediafor911truth.orgwww.pilotsfor911truth.orgwww.mp911truth.orgwww.ae911truth.orgwww.rl911truth.orgwww.stj911.orgwww.l911t.comwww.v911t.orgwww.thisweek.org.ukwww.abolishwar.org.ukwww.elementary.org.ukwww.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/

A SMALL trove of documents released last week throws cold water on the notion that high-minded German scientists tried to slow work on an atomic bomb for the Nazi regime during World War II. But the documents provide no definitive answer to the question of why German physicists, who were among the best in the world, made so little progress on an atomic weapon compared with their counterparts in the United States.

The idea that German scientists worried about the morality of atomic war and tried to head off the development of a bomb was given wide currency in "Copenhagen," Michael Frayn's award-winning play, which focuses on a pivotal meeting in September 1941 between Werner Heisenberg, the scientific head of the German nuclear project, and Niels Bohr, his Danish mentor. Both were Nobel laureates and towering figures in 20th-century physics.

The play is built around the differing recollections of the two men and the ultimate uncertainty of exactly what happened. In it, the Heisenberg character explains that he visited Bohr to warn him, in highly guarded language, that atomic bombs could be built and to feel him out on whether physicists on both sides could agree to stop the work. The Frayn play was greatly influenced by a book that argued that Heisenberg and his colleagues actually sabotaged the German bomb program from within, a view that is accepted by few historians who have looked into the question.

British and American Intelligence officers of the Alsos mission dismantle Prof. Heisenberg's last atomic pile, installed in a cave at Haigerloch. Photo from David Irving: The Virus House (1967).

The puzzle as to why the German atomic bomb program stalled has several overlapping explanations. Some of the best German physicists were Jewish and had been driven into exile, where many worked on the American or British atomic bomb programs. Nazi ideology had only scorn for "Jewish physics" and thus undervalued what theoretical physicists could contribute to the war effort. And as saturation bombing ravaged German cities, the Nazi industrial machine increasingly lacked the ability to mount a vast bomb development project to compete with the American Manhattan Project.

Still, it is clear that German physicists, for whatever reason, did fail to push hard enough to reach the goal. Some attribute that to surprising technical errors, like a grotesque overestimate of the amount of fissile material that was needed and a failure to realize that readily available graphite, if highly purified, could be used to moderate the atomic reaction instead of scarce, hard-to-get heavy water. Others blame arrogance and complacency on the part of German physicists who felt that if the job was hard for them, it would be impossible for the Allies. And some believe that there was a genuine reluctance to work on such an awesome weapon, either for moral reasons or for fear of failing and being blamed for a national defeat.

Recordings made surreptitiously of Heisenberg and other German scientists held in captivity after the German surrender show that they were stunned by news that the United States had exploded an atomic bomb over Hiroshima and refused to believe that it had actually been done. Even in these early recordings, one can discern the beginnings of a search for the moral high ground, as one German physicist contrasts the American development of "this ghastly weapon of war" with more peaceful nuclear reactor research under Hitler.

Heisenberg's own version of his meeting with Bohr was set out years after the war in a letter that was excerpted in a book on the atomic bomb projects. He recalled starting his conversation with Bohr by raising a question about whether it was "right" for physicists to work on uranium during the war, given that it could lead to "grave consequences." He also said he had told Bohr that developing atomic weapons would require such a terrific technical effort that one could hope they would not be ready in time. He felt the situation gave physicists leverage to dissuade government officials from even trying to build the bomb.

That letter so angered Bohr that he drafted a number of responses between 1957 and 1962 that were never sent but were released last week by the Bohr family. As Bohr recalled it, Heisenberg left "the firm impression that, under your leadership, everything was being done in Germany to develop atomic weapons." Bohr said that Heisenberg "gave no hint about efforts on the part of German scientists to prevent such a development."

Even with these latest documents, we are still left with conflicting versions from the two participants. Most historians seem inclined to accept Bohr's version as more probable and Heisenberg's as revisionist history, a view that gains credence by looking at Heisenberg in a broader context than just that single meeting.

David Cassidy, a historian at Hofstra University who wrote a biography of Heisenberg, says there is no evidence from any other sources that moral issues were of particular concern to Heisenberg. Indeed, he says, Heisenberg seemed most concerned about using the war to prove the worth of physics to the nation and its rulers. With those motivations in mind, it seems likely that Heisenberg would have made a bomb if he could.

Relevant items on this website:

David Irving: The German Atomic Bomb (Simon & Schuster). Free download
Free download of book by David Irving: Overheard: transcripts of German prisoners secret conversations, including Heisenberg (in preparation)

IrvingDavid Irving comments:

ABSENT from all these articles about the Niels Bohr letter and the Nazi atomic bomb is any reference to the first ever book written on the Nazi atomic research programme, namely my own The Virus House, published by Simon & Schuster in New York as The German Atomic Bomb. Professor Werner Heisenberg, whom I interviewed extensively for the book, dedicated a glowing half-page review to the book in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; in the US National Archives (Manhattan Project files) is an equally flattering private typescript review by none other than Lieut.-General Leslie Groves, builder of the Pentagon and father of the Manhattan Project. (No doubt a modern Prof. Richard Evans, if paid enough to do so, would quirt slime over both these experts as "ignorant" and "should-know-betters", just as he did in the Lipstadt Trial).

I donated the verbatim transcript of the tape-recorded Heisenberg interview, along with all my other working papers on the book -- interviews with Walter Gerlach, Otto Hahn (right), HahnKurt Diebner, Kurt Strassman, Carl-Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Edward Teller and the rest -- to the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich, and still have the original tapes. No subsequent historian of that topic has failed to take advantage of these interviews, as Thomas Powers himself admits; Michael Frayn pays generous praise to The Virus House in the introduction to his play.

Why this reticence on the part of American newspapermen, one wonders? Or perhaps not. --

Incidentally, I recall Niels Bohr coming to lecture at The Royal College of Science in South Kensington in about 1957; bookthe entire college poured in to the Physics theatre to hear the great man, and left baffled, his entire presentation having been conducted in a whisper inaudible even to the first row. Churchill had much the same problem with Bohr, he confessed to his private staff: Bohr, visiting him in 1939, had proved to be a man of impenetrable brilliance.

In the documents, test pilot Hans Zinsser describes seeing a mushroom cloud in the sky during a test flight near Ludwigslust in 1944
BYALLAN HALL 23 FEB 2017

Documents unearthed in an American archive suggest that Nazi Germany may have tested an operational nuclear bomb before the end of World War Two .
Recently declassifed file APO 696 from the National Archives in Washington is a detailed survey of how far Third Reich scientists got in the development of an atomic bomb - something leader Adolf Hitler craved.
In the file, obtained by the popular daily newspaper Bild, the task of the academics who prepared the paper between 1944 and 1947 was the “investigations, research, developments and practical use of the German atomic bomb.”
The report was prepared by countless American and British intelligence officers and also includes the testimony of four German experts - two chemical physicists, a chemist and a missile expert.
It concurs that Hitler’s boffins failed in the quest to achieve a breakthrough in nuclear technology - BUT that a documented test may have taken place of a rudimentary warhead in 1944.
The statement of the German test pilot Hans Zinsser in the file is considered evidence. The missile expert says he observed in 1944 a mushroom cloud in the sky during a test flight near Ludwigslust.
His log submitted to the Allied investigators reads: “In early October 1944 I flew away 12-15km from a nuclear test station near Ludwigslust (South of Lübeck).
“A cloud shaped like a mushroom with turbulent, billowing sections (at about 7,000m) stood, without any seeming connections over the spot where the explosion took place.
Strong electrical disturbances and the impossibility to continue radio communication as by lighting turned up.'
He estimated that the cloud stretched for 9km and described further “strange colourings” followed by a blast wave which translated into a “strong pull on the stick” - meaning his cockpit controls.
An hour later a pilot in a different machine took off from Ludwigslust and observed the same phenomenon.
According to other archival documents, the Italian correspondent Luigi Romersa observed on the ground the same explosion.
He had been sent by dictator Benito Mussolini to watch the test of a “new weapon” of the Germans. He was ordered to report his impressions back to Mussolini.
It is known that Hitler pursued the goal of nuclear technology and wanted his V-2 rockets to be able to carry them to destroy the UK.
The testimony of the four German scientists in the declassified American report mentions a top secret meeting held in Berlin in 1943 at which armaments minister and Hitler favourite Albert Speer was present for the discussion called a “nuclear summit.”
In the end the report states that the Allies believe the Germans fell short of triggering the nuclear chain reaction necessary to trigger a nuclear blast - but none could come up with an explanation for what occurred in the skies over Ludwigslust in 1944.

A SMALL trove of documents released last week throws cold water on the notion that high-minded German scientists tried to slow work on an atomic bomb for the Nazi regime during World War II. But the documents provide no definitive answer to the question of why German physicists, who were among the best in the world, made so little progress on an atomic weapon compared with their counterparts in the United States.

The idea that German scientists worried about the morality of atomic war and tried to head off the development of a bomb was given wide currency in "Copenhagen," Michael Frayn's award-winning play, which focuses on a pivotal meeting in September 1941 between Werner Heisenberg, the scientific head of the German nuclear project, and Niels Bohr, his Danish mentor. Both were Nobel laureates and towering figures in 20th-century physics.

The play is built around the differing recollections of the two men and the ultimate uncertainty of exactly what happened. In it, the Heisenberg character explains that he visited Bohr to warn him, in highly guarded language, that atomic bombs could be built and to feel him out on whether physicists on both sides could agree to stop the work. The Frayn play was greatly influenced by a book that argued that Heisenberg and his colleagues actually sabotaged the German bomb program from within, a view that is accepted by few historians who have looked into the question.

British and American Intelligence officers of the Alsos mission dismantle Prof. Heisenberg's last atomic pile, installed in a cave at Haigerloch. Photo from David Irving: The Virus House (1967).

The puzzle as to why the German atomic bomb program stalled has several overlapping explanations. Some of the best German physicists were Jewish and had been driven into exile, where many worked on the American or British atomic bomb programs. Nazi ideology had only scorn for "Jewish physics" and thus undervalued what theoretical physicists could contribute to the war effort. And as saturation bombing ravaged German cities, the Nazi industrial machine increasingly lacked the ability to mount a vast bomb development project to compete with the American Manhattan Project.

Still, it is clear that German physicists, for whatever reason, did fail to push hard enough to reach the goal. Some attribute that to surprising technical errors, like a grotesque overestimate of the amount of fissile material that was needed and a failure to realize that readily available graphite, if highly purified, could be used to moderate the atomic reaction instead of scarce, hard-to-get heavy water. Others blame arrogance and complacency on the part of German physicists who felt that if the job was hard for them, it would be impossible for the Allies. And some believe that there was a genuine reluctance to work on such an awesome weapon, either for moral reasons or for fear of failing and being blamed for a national defeat.

Recordings made surreptitiously of Heisenberg and other German scientists held in captivity after the German surrender show that they were stunned by news that the United States had exploded an atomic bomb over Hiroshima and refused to believe that it had actually been done. Even in these early recordings, one can discern the beginnings of a search for the moral high ground, as one German physicist contrasts the American development of "this ghastly weapon of war" with more peaceful nuclear reactor research under Hitler.

Heisenberg's own version of his meeting with Bohr was set out years after the war in a letter that was excerpted in a book on the atomic bomb projects. He recalled starting his conversation with Bohr by raising a question about whether it was "right" for physicists to work on uranium during the war, given that it could lead to "grave consequences." He also said he had told Bohr that developing atomic weapons would require such a terrific technical effort that one could hope they would not be ready in time. He felt the situation gave physicists leverage to dissuade government officials from even trying to build the bomb.

That letter so angered Bohr that he drafted a number of responses between 1957 and 1962 that were never sent but were released last week by the Bohr family. As Bohr recalled it, Heisenberg left "the firm impression that, under your leadership, everything was being done in Germany to develop atomic weapons." Bohr said that Heisenberg "gave no hint about efforts on the part of German scientists to prevent such a development."

Even with these latest documents, we are still left with conflicting versions from the two participants. Most historians seem inclined to accept Bohr's version as more probable and Heisenberg's as revisionist history, a view that gains credence by looking at Heisenberg in a broader context than just that single meeting.

David Cassidy, a historian at Hofstra University who wrote a biography of Heisenberg, says there is no evidence from any other sources that moral issues were of particular concern to Heisenberg. Indeed, he says, Heisenberg seemed most concerned about using the war to prove the worth of physics to the nation and its rulers. With those motivations in mind, it seems likely that Heisenberg would have made a bomb if he could.

Relevant items on this website:

David Irving: The German Atomic Bomb (Simon & Schuster). Free download
Free download of book by David Irving: Overheard: transcripts of German prisoners secret conversations, including Heisenberg (in preparation)

IrvingDavid Irving comments:

ABSENT from all these articles about the Niels Bohr letter and the Nazi atomic bomb is any reference to the first ever book written on the Nazi atomic research programme, namely my own The Virus House, published by Simon & Schuster in New York as The German Atomic Bomb. Professor Werner Heisenberg, whom I interviewed extensively for the book, dedicated a glowing half-page review to the book in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; in the US National Archives (Manhattan Project files) is an equally flattering private typescript review by none other than Lieut.-General Leslie Groves, builder of the Pentagon and father of the Manhattan Project. (No doubt a modern Prof. Richard Evans, if paid enough to do so, would quirt slime over both these experts as "ignorant" and "should-know-betters", just as he did in the Lipstadt Trial).

I donated the verbatim transcript of the tape-recorded Heisenberg interview, along with all my other working papers on the book -- interviews with Walter Gerlach, Otto Hahn (right), HahnKurt Diebner, Kurt Strassman, Carl-Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Edward Teller and the rest -- to the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich, and still have the original tapes. No subsequent historian of that topic has failed to take advantage of these interviews, as Thomas Powers himself admits; Michael Frayn pays generous praise to The Virus House in the introduction to his play.

Why this reticence on the part of American newspapermen, one wonders? Or perhaps not. --

Incidentally, I recall Niels Bohr coming to lecture at The Royal College of Science in South Kensington in about 1957; bookthe entire college poured in to the Physics theatre to hear the great man, and left baffled, his entire presentation having been conducted in a whisper inaudible even to the first row. Churchill had much the same problem with Bohr, he confessed to his private staff: Bohr, visiting him in 1939, had proved to be a man of impenetrable brilliance.

In the documents, test pilot Hans Zinsser describes seeing a mushroom cloud in the sky during a test flight near Ludwigslust in 1944
BYALLAN HALL 23 FEB 2017

Documents unearthed in an American archive suggest that Nazi Germany may have tested an operational nuclear bomb before the end of World War Two .
Recently declassifed file APO 696 from the National Archives in Washington is a detailed survey of how far Third Reich scientists got in the development of an atomic bomb - something leader Adolf Hitler craved.
In the file, obtained by the popular daily newspaper Bild, the task of the academics who prepared the paper between 1944 and 1947 was the “investigations, research, developments and practical use of the German atomic bomb.”
The report was prepared by countless American and British intelligence officers and also includes the testimony of four German experts - two chemical physicists, a chemist and a missile expert.
It concurs that Hitler’s boffins failed in the quest to achieve a breakthrough in nuclear technology - BUT that a documented test may have taken place of a rudimentary warhead in 1944.
The statement of the German test pilot Hans Zinsser in the file is considered evidence. The missile expert says he observed in 1944 a mushroom cloud in the sky during a test flight near Ludwigslust.
His log submitted to the Allied investigators reads: “In early October 1944 I flew away 12-15km from a nuclear test station near Ludwigslust (South of Lübeck).
“A cloud shaped like a mushroom with turbulent, billowing sections (at about 7,000m) stood, without any seeming connections over the spot where the explosion took place.
Strong electrical disturbances and the impossibility to continue radio communication as by lighting turned up.'
He estimated that the cloud stretched for 9km and described further “strange colourings” followed by a blast wave which translated into a “strong pull on the stick” - meaning his cockpit controls.
An hour later a pilot in a different machine took off from Ludwigslust and observed the same phenomenon.
According to other archival documents, the Italian correspondent Luigi Romersa observed on the ground the same explosion.
He had been sent by dictator Benito Mussolini to watch the test of a “new weapon” of the Germans. He was ordered to report his impressions back to Mussolini.
It is known that Hitler pursued the goal of nuclear technology and wanted his V-2 rockets to be able to carry them to destroy the UK.
The testimony of the four German scientists in the declassified American report mentions a top secret meeting held in Berlin in 1943 at which armaments minister and Hitler favourite Albert Speer was present for the discussion called a “nuclear summit.”
In the end the report states that the Allies believe the Germans fell short of triggering the nuclear chain reaction necessary to trigger a nuclear blast - but none could come up with an explanation for what occurred in the skies over Ludwigslust in 1944.

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More than 126,000 barrels of nuclear material that Hitler planned to use in an atom bomb programme now lies rotting over 2,000 feet below ground in an old salt mine

More than 126,000 barrels of nuclear material that Hitler planned to use in an atom bomb programme now lies rotting over 2,000 feet below ground in an old salt mine

German nuclear experts believe they have found nuclear waste from Hitler’s secret atom bomb programme in a crumbling mine near Hanover.

More than 126,000 barrels of nuclear material lie rotting over 2,000 feet below ground in an old salt mine.

Rumour has it that the remains of nuclear scientists who worked on the Nazi programme are also there, their irradiated bodies burned in secret by S.S. men sworn to secrecy.

A statement by a boss of the Asse II nuclear fuel dump, just discovered in an archive, said how in 1967 'our association sank radioactive wastes from the last war, uranium waste, from the preparation of the German atom bomb.'

This has sent shock waves through historians who thought that the German atomic programme was nowhere near advanced enough in WW2 to have produced nuclear waste in any quantities.

It has also triggered a firestorm of uncertainty among locals, especially given Germany’s paranoia post-Fukushima.

Germany was the first western nation to announce the closure of all its atomic power plants following the disaster at the Japanese facility following the catastrophic earthquake and Tsunami in March.

There are calls to remove all the nuclear material stored within the sealed site but this would cost billions of pounds.

Yet the thought of Nazi atomic bomb material stored underground has made headlines across Germany - and the country’s Greenpeace movement has backed a call for secret documents relating to the dump to be released to the state parliament from sealed archives in Berlin.

It was in January of 1939, nine months before the outbreak of the Second World War, that German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann published the results of an historic experiment about nuclear fission.

The German 'uranium project' began in earnest shortly after Germany’s invasion of Poland in September.

Army physicist Kurt Diebner led a team tasked to investigate the military applications of fission. By the end of the year the physicist Werner Heisenberg had calculated that nuclear fission chain reactions might be possible.

Although the war hampered their work, by the fall of the Third Reich in 1945 Nazi scientists had achieved a significant enrichment in samples of uranium.

Mark Walker, a US expert on the Nazi programme said: 'Because we still don’t know about these projects, which remain cloaked in WW2 secrecy, it isn’t safe to say the Nazis fell short of enriching enough uranium for a bomb. Some documents remain top secret to this day.

'Claims that a nuclear weapon was tested at Ruegen in October 1944 and again at Ohrdruf in March 1945 leave open a question, did they or didn’t they?'

Ruegen is a Baltic island and Ohrdruf a top-secret bunker complex in Thuringia where local legend has it that an A-bomb was tested by the Nazis in the dying days of the war.

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